


A Guide to Riften

by JakeDov



Series: The Skyrim Chronicles [4]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Boys In Love, Feels, Finding a new place to live, Friendship, Gay Male Character, Love, M/M, Male Friendship, Other, Relationship Goals, coming home, how to master settling down in a new city, we just want to feel safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 02:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14534742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JakeDov/pseuds/JakeDov
Summary: Ralof and Haithabu realize their long-term dream of settling down together, and have bought a cozy house in the lake-side town of Riften - the first safe home either of them has ever known.But settling down in an unknown neighborhood and with so much stuff about themselves they still need to figure out is not a task that comes natural to either them and they struggle, trying to fit.It is a challlenge neither Ra norTabu can hope to win alone and they have to face these obstacles together, or not at all.





	A Guide to Riften

A Guide to the Home in Riften

“Morning, sunshine,” I said cheerfully, smiling to myself and carefully stepping around the big duvet bed, yanking at the curtains with determined precision to let in some light while I spoke. 

I had just succeeded in convincing myself it was finally time to wake him and hence got up from the breakfast table where I had sat on my fifth cup of coffee for hours on end now, watching and listening to my partner snore. The coffee was black and strong, just what I needed after a night like this. 

On a whim – and maybe more cruelly than I should have been – I decided to pry open the shutters of the windows right away as well, allowing bright and supple rays of blinding morning sun to fall inside and flood the entire room in a mere handful of seconds, just like an ocean of water would flood the desert of Alik´ir, leaving not a single nook, not a single cranny without its re-invigorating light. I mused briefly about the good weather – Skyrim at this point of the year was usually far from cheerful and especially so after the last few days had been practically drowned out by heavy rainfall. It had felt especially ghastly as we had only just arrived from Windhelm barely more than a week before, where excruciating snow blizzards still raged day and night, and even here, far to the south, we had been confined to the four walls of our fixer-upper home, waiting till the offshoot of said storms abated even in these supple lowlands. 

Blinking against the friendly sun now, I just shrugged and decided to accept any good fortune without questioning its doubtful origins and prayed that the sunshine and the merriment it entailed would last. After all, there was so much we still had to do around the house before winter came for real, we really could do with a few nice and dry days to finally get to it. Though with the state Ralof currently was in I felt myself growing more and more convinced that we would probably not be as productive today as I had secretly hoped for. 

I squinted as I looked out of the slightly milky window panes onto the wooden porch of our very own, a week ago newly purchased house in Riften. The panes had been left in there from the tenants before and were far from high-quality, so I quickly added clear glass from the monger and new wooden frames without insect holes for the few windows this mansion sported from the mill to the steadily growing list of details accumulating in my head. Outside, the tips of the trees were softly billowing in the gentle breeze of late morning and I could hear the rushing swoosh of their leaves brushing against each other in a softly swaying motion even through locked doors and closed windows. My mouth quirked up at the corners as if by a will of its own. 

The lake one story below, onto which our sleeping room windows looked out quite gracefully, was moving as gently as ever and its small waves were caressing the grassy shore, like the expectant younger sibling encouraging the older one to come play with it. Ample copses of trees were leaning their arching branches into the soft coolness in little clusters and the water was lapping merrily against the wooden poles of our private boat bridge directly attached to the terrace of our mansion. The stony walls of all the houses of Riften had been built close to or even partly into the far-extending lake Honrich, many years ago, in a time and age even my father had not been alive yet. 

I liked Riften, liked the way people here were forthcoming to strangers and travellers, aiding their wants and needs, but still discreet enough to mind their own business most of the times and during my various campaigns in the previous years I had made many acquaintances and even a few friends here (unfortunately alongside of a few well-situated enemies, as I am sad to confess) and therefore I was fairly comfortable inside the general protection of its wooden walls. Yes, I thought, as I so often had, these past few days. Yes, that was it. That was what I had been missing all along. Here, I would finally be able to attain happiness.

The roots of Riften as a settlement were not actually known to me, nor to anyone I had as of yet asked about it, though now that we actually lived here I was keen to learn as much about the city as possible and sure as hell planned on finding out at some point. I´d talked to Wylandriah, the court wizard of the Jarl, and hence knew some of its history already, and therefore knew it had not always been the inclusive sort of town it was today. Nonetheless, the city could be and has always been roughly divided into two very different and sometimes quite forcefully clashing parts. There was the Dryside – encompassing everything built on solid land – with the Jarl´s Palace, the Temple of Mara and the houses and mansions of the more well-heeled inhabitants of this part of Skyrim, and then there was the Plankside – what could be called the business and commerce district of Riften, which incorporated the local fishery, the Honey-Brew-Meadery, a few private houses on stilts and a large, stunted warehouse for all sorts of trade being shipped in and out of Riften and from there to all other parts of Skyrim via the little river joining the lake far away across the expanse of the vast body of water, in the distant haze to the west of the Rift, this part of the city built on tall stilts and wooden poles far out into the busy waters. 

The house Ra and I had purchased was situated at the very margins of town, built partly on land, providing our own herbarium, and partly on stilts, gaining direct access to the water, but that´s just the way I liked it anyways. The hustle and bustle of a commercial centre such as Riften was strenuous and could be quite stressful even in the best of times, so both of us had felt like we could do with a nice and quiet place to relax and enjoy ourselves in, at the scarce times when none of us would be away for work and we would both share the common space we had worked so hard to acquire, for so many years. The house was called Honeyside and technically sat on the so-called Dryside though actually three sides of it were surrounded by water, a charming small building at Riften´s very eastern edge close to the stables just outside the city gates. The little garden that had come with the property actually adjoined to the heavily forticated boundary of the encircling wall itself. The two story mansion had its own jetty (with an old but still fairly nostalgically working rowing boat tied to its end), and from there a direct and very exclusively private route out of to the city without having to bother with the sentries at the actual gate, a sunny porch encircling the first story of the building on which I longed to sit and savour the smells, the sounds and the feel of nature all around once we were finished with remodelling, and a truly magnificent stunning panorama view over the entire lake, great parts of Riften to the left and the distant ridge of mountains demarcating Skyrim from the adjoining province of Morrowind far, far away to the right. It was a dream come true for me, and I could barely wait to get started on our quest in making this beautiful place even more inhabitable and welcoming for the both of us.

I sighed, contented, and watched the busy merchants running to and fro on the jetties criss-crossing the Lake Quarter. From behind the window I could just make out the commercial district, the blurred image the stained panes were making of the outside world not particularly helpful for a clear view, but I couldn’t help but smile anyways. It was what I had so long coveted, what I had unconsciously craved for years now, without actually knowing what exactly it was that I needed and had spent so long missing, without consciously registering my need for quietude, for stability and steadfastness in my life. Not until Ralof had come along. It was not that I didn’t like what I was doing – what we were doing. I loved my job, I really did, and not for all the world would I ever want to trade it for something more common or boring. After all, I liked to think that my profession was the thing that had kept me comparatively sane over the course of the decades and entire centuries of intermittent madness and strife I had already had to witness on this earth. It served as a kind of anchor for me, a reminder of the fact that no matter how bad I was feeling, no matter how depressed or blue or how unhappy I was with myself and the world, there were always people that had it far worse than I did, and I knew that there was and would always be some work to be done and some people I could save in the process. And when nothing else does, this usually gets through to me, gets me to pull myself together and continue. But coming home to a familiarly acquainted environment and a loving partner therein, a place you can feel the most comfortable in and with it a person you loved more than yourself, certainly had its very own perks. And after all, it didn’t mean that we would both all of a sudden had to stop working. We could do that, we could very well earn money with what each of us was best at and still settle down and try to build a real life together. I sure as hell was ready for that and by now I was utterly convinced it would work out in the end. 

I let the curtain fall back into place and took up my coffee mug from where I had parked it on the dusty sill, turning back with a barely held back sigh towards the big duvet bed in the middle of the room from which I had already gotten up quite some hours ago. Before I could get started on anything real, though, I had other, more pressing kinds of issues to attend to. There was still a curled-up form under the covers which was messily and unfortunately tangled and whom I now tried to speak to nonetheless, even though I knew he´d hate me for waking him up way before noon. 

“Look at you,” I drawled. “You look so well-rested, the sun seems to shine right out of you. Have you slept well? Ready to face another day?” 

There wasn’t any reaction, but then, I hadn’t expected one. I smiled to myself and continued. 

“You should really have a look outside, honey. It is lovely! It´s gonna be the first sunny day we have here and I am desperate to get started. After all, we wanted to remodel the porch and reinforce the jetty as soon as we were able to get to it – it really looks quite dilapidated and I wouldn’t trust you to walk on it. Also, I was at Mistveil Keep earlier and had Anuriel send over the rest of the furniture we purchased last week some time during the day. That should be okay, seeing as we have Zulu here to help carry the heavier things. That way, we should have even the downstairs area finished and completely furnished by tonight and can fully concentrate on the jetty and the garden by the morrow. Or we can do it the other way round, considering the weather. What do you say?” 

There was no immediate answer, so I took another languid slurp from my hot beverage and proceeded to lean against the wooden beam of the open archway that would lead back into the kitchen to observe my lover´s reaction. The coffee was hot and refreshing – much as Ralof usually was all without caffeine, though not so much so in his current state – and I couldn’t repress another, minute smile. 

“You know, I could make breakfast for you, if you wanted it real bad,” I continued when all he managed was a pained groan and he half lifted, half dragged his arm across the expanse of the mattress to pull my pillow from the other side of the bed across his face in order to blot out the – for him – rather sudden light. 

Usually not quite that malicious, I decided to take things slightly farther right now and started to describe a comprehensive – fatty and very, very greasy – meal I could have ready in no time at all to this hungover individual in my bed, and shook my head in a mixture of amusement and confusion as to why people went about and got drunk in the first place, if they knew so well what would inexorably await them the next morning. Knowing many Nords – and many more Nords who could really hold their liquor – I had never understood why anyone would try to reach quite that high a level of intoxication. It seemed completely irrational and stupid to me, especially considering the fact that whenever Ralof got drunk he was always the same miserable self on the morning after. But I guess I would probably just never understand things like these. Humans really had me musing sometimes. Although usually I did not actually even mind this kind of hobby all too much, but this time, they had taken things slightly too far in my opinion. Indeed, as far as I was concerned, Ra could debauch and drink as often and as much as he wanted to – short of a lethal dose of course, I would not be overly happy about that one – if only I did not have to participate. But yesterday, things had definitely gotten out of hand, the situation had almost escalated when Ra and his buddy had come stumbling home way past midnight and even though I knew that it wasn’t Ralof´s fault, or at least not entirely his alone, I was nonetheless miffed at him now. 

“So,” I boomed loudly, leaning back against the wooden pillar, warming coffee clutched between my hands, grinning gleefully as I watched my lover struggle with the muddled sheets, this spectacular drama almost too adorable and funny to keep up my act of indifference, Ra´s failing attempts to coordinate each and every single motion almost too comical to keep a straight face about. I knew he didn’t feel well, probably had a pounding headache and would regret his debauchery for the rest of the day – maybe even for the rest of the week – but to me it was just hilarious to watch him, he who was usually so mature and composed, lose it like that. “How about I scramble some eggs for you? If you give me half an hour, I´ll get some bacon from the market and fry it for you right here, right now. How do you feel about some greasy pork for breakfast, hm?”

“Aarrrgh, I hate you,” came the belated reply from under the covers of our new but by now very much unmade duvet bed. Ra´s voice was hoarse and he sounded like he was still halfway asleep. I stood there, in front of the bed in which my lover was moaning and writhing and sighing as if his world was just now coming to a dire end and took another long sip out of my coffee mug. I chuckled as Ra turned around sluggishly and tried to hide from the light. 

“Oh, I know you do, trust me,” I said smugly. “Or you probably wouldn’t have drunk yourself senseless last night.”

“I didn’t drink myself senseless,” complained Ra, feebly indignant. “I wasn’t even really drunk.”

I snorted loudly and nearly choked on my coffee in my hurry to prove him wrong. “Oh please,” I said, dismissively. “I beg to differ. Strongly. You didn’t even recognize your boyfriend any more before you passed out next to me.”

“Boyfriend? What boyfriend?”, he slurred. “You mean the sneaky one with the long hair and the pointy ears? The crazy one?”

“Haha,” I answered without much humour. “Talk about crazy. Very funny. Especially since it was you who tried to flirt your way into his very bed last night.”

Ra took a deep breath and finally pulled the pillow from his face, revealing a tired, rumpled and slightly untidy head. His eyes were still closed to slits and he looked like he really had a very serious and painful hangover that could make his head explode any second from now. I didn’t know if I should feel spiteful or be sorry for him about that. Right now, I admittedly had the very strong urge to take hold of one of the frying pans in the kitchen and a corresponding steel soup ladle and bang both of them together as loud and as long as I could right at the food of the bed. I shook my head in irritation and discarded the idea. It probably would do neither of us any good, especially not since I would hence probably be the one having to endure the consequences as much as he did and subsequently rebuilt the jetty all alone and single-handedly – with all the heavy lifting and the hauling of logs that entailed, and I was just in no mood to get me started on this. After all what else were two muscly men in my house good for if not to do this kind of work for me? If only they would get over their hangover soon and start being useful again. 

“Oh yeah? What´s wrong with that?”, asked Ra syrupy. “Am I not allowed to seduce you any more, or what?”

“It would have been a little bit more seducing if Zulu had not stood right there and watched you. And even cheered you on quite lewdly.” I paused for a moment to take another sip and let that sink in. “Also, I guess the fact that how you told me you shouldn’t be doing any of this as you have a partner at home who was at that very moment waiting for your return kind of killed the mood. Besides, you were definitely in no state for any kind of action whatsoever, believe me. You could barely stand upright.”

Ra groaned again and rolled over. “Talos…,” he sighed, miserable.

“No. No, I really don’t think your God is particularly able to help you out in this respect. You managed quite well to screw up on your own. This is all on you. And on Zulu, of course. I told you this before, but I´ll gladly repeat myself and say it again now: Zulu has a very bad influence on you.”

“Hey, don’t say that. Zulu´s my best friend!”

“The one thing doesn’t except the other, darling,” I offered. 

“You just don’t know him the way I do. He´s… different.”

“Yeah, second that. And seeing how he´s nearly killed you tonight for the third time this week, I am immensely glad that I don’t. That way, at least one man in this house retains a sample of sanity. And his life. You, on the other hand, look like something even Alduin may spit out again for fear of poisoning himself if he takes too big a bite. You´re a mess.”

“And you´re rude. What happened with civility and respect towards your seniors? You´re supposed to be nice to your boyfriend.”

“Nice is only for sobers. I can do only so much.” I snapped my fingers in a dismissive flick of my wrist and clicked my tongue. “Also, I´ll have you know that I am more than eight times your senior. You´re barely thirty. Just for future records.”

“Urgh, Tabu,” he growled, but didn’t say any more. Maybe he couldn’t say any more, maybe he didn’t want to say any more considering he actually didn’t know my real age at all. I never spoke of it, though we usually celebrated both his and my birthday, but he never asked. And I was glad for that, as it was a subject I was not particularly fond of indulging.

Ra struggled with the bedsheets and grunted. “Uh… what time is it?”

“Much too late for you to remain in bed. I´ve been up for hours. Since the break of dawn, actually. I´ve even shot a hare when I took Henna for a quick run.”

A few gagging motions later, Ra begged with a hoarse voice, “Please don’t talk about food to me!”

I shrugged once more. “What do you expect? I´m an elf. Always one for the truth, no matter how stark it may seem. After all, you know what you signed up for. Now, do you wanna grace the world with your delightful presence at long last? We have hell of a lot to do.”

Ra groaned and rolled over in bed again, trying to sit up, precariously balancing his intoxicated body on the corner of the soft mattress for a few infinite seconds. Hanging there, he looked dangerously close to either falling over on his face, or else, swaying like a twig of mistletoe in an otherwise bare branch in the middle of a windswept plain for the rest of the day, unable to move his inebriated limbs and muscles any further. I couldn’t immediately decide which version would be more appealing for me today.

“And I like Zulu, you know I do,” I continued, “but maybe he is not the very best role model for any of us. I mean, he is pretty awesome when it comes to bashing in the heads of any of his multiple enemies, I readily agree on that. And man, he is handsome, he´s a real beauty. But when it comes to his friends, I don’t know if he realizes that there is a subtle yet unmistakable line one shouldn’t cross. After all, there´s only so much any human being can endure. Even you Nords. I don’t know if he knows what control even is. I mean, the rate you two have been going at this week, your thinking apparatus will be positively mashed up once he leaves again.” I continued in a dark growl. “If indeed he ever does.” 

I, for my part, was far from certain of that and was seriously beginning to entertain the thought of inventing a major calamity in remote, far-away Windhelm only to get Ralof´s big but inexplicably needy friend off my back at long last. Metaphorically speaking only, of course. 

By the time Ra´s feet finally hit the cool wooden floorboards and staggered towards the kitchen with an unsteady thumping noise, the sun had passed another few marks on the clock and the stark early-morning shadows had shifted to something more subtle and grey. There was a lot of groaning, moaning and all other kinds of rather unattractive noises coming out of him and I briefly reconsidered my maybe slightly hasty decision of pulling him out of sleep that early. But then I remembered how he and Zulu had stirred the entire neighbourhood last night when they had nearly bashed in the doors of a dozen houses on their way home and for almost another twenty minutes had refused to stop singing. Loud, off key and absolutely terribly. I was probably the first elf ever who sometimes wished he could exchange his impeccable hearing apparatus with that (non-existing) of an Argonian swamp dweller. Ra bent down with wobbly knees, intent on kissing me, but I quickly held up a hand before he could come too close and arrested him halfway through, my palm coming to rest against the firmer part of his bare chest. 

“Woha, stop,” I said firmly. “You´re reeking of ale.” 

The contact seemed to stretch and prolong, Ralof either too unsteady or too tired on his own two feet to keep up straight, thus seeming to half lean, half stumble towards the sustaining hand on his front. I gave him a gentle shove backwards and he straightened up again, swaying like a fir tree in the winds of winter. He furrowed his brows and sniffed, lids narrowed to allow barely more than a strip of light by which to see, avoiding as much brightness as possible, a frown forming on his rumpled forehead. I would very much have liked to silence the insistent little voice in my head, but couldn’t help but notice how he looked hot and incredibly sexy even though rumpled and hungover. It took an immense measure of self-control right now not to push him up against the wall or all the way back towards the bed and make him feel what exactly he meant to me. And even more so as I was right now supposed to be fairly angry with him. 

“That´s because I drank ale,” he grumbled in a hoarse voice, regarding me thoughtfully, just as if I was a gross mutation between a Kajeet, an Argonian and an entirely different otherworldly intruder he didn’t know the purpose of in his kitchen yet. Then, still moving as if in slow motion, he reached out and around me wordlessly and took a very long and a veeeery deep sip out of my coffee cup, handing it back completely drained.

I sighed. “Yeah, again, I know. And loads of it by the looks of you. Do you remember yesterday evening at all?”

Ra still stood in the middle of the room and frowned, looking at his hands as if they were something immensely new to him. “I…. ah… I actually don’t… I guess… It´s all kind of a big, uh… blurry… blur, actually.”

“Small wonder,” I snorted. “It would have surprised me if you could. Though judging by the amount of it, I am immensely glad that you made it through the night at all and I didn’t have to ditch you in the lake as an intoxicated corpse this morning. You won´t remember for quite some time if I´m correct. If at all.”

“You would have done that?”, drawled Ra, clearly still not entirely sure what to do with himself. “Ditched me in the lake.”

“Oh, believe me, I was on the verge of doing so at least a dozen times tonight.” Ra blinked at me, bewildered. “You were snoring,” I added. “Viciously.”

“No I was not,” he miffed. “I don’t snore. Ever. You must have imagined it.”

“Sure.” I raised an eyebrow. “You were snoring so loud the neighbours came over and complained. Twice. Lovely people, by the way.”

“That´s impossible. We don’t even have any direct neighbours,” Ra insisted, brows drawn together as he seemed to contemplate sitting down at the table across from me and share in with a brimming pot of coffee, or if he should just succumb to the pull of remaining alcoholism and retreat to bed once more. I saw him eye the soft downy mattress with unrepressed longing, the way he usually only looked at me when he felt especially amorous, and I huffed again.

“Yeah, my point exactly,” I answered and motioned for him to sit, rummaging in our as of yet wild assortment in the pretty messy cooking area to produce another dusty mug from out of somewhere. “See what I had to endure? You should indeed be glad I didn’t turn deaf. It would be your fault alone.” 

I sprinkled some water over it to have it cleaned superficially and then poured him another, very big cup of coffee of his own and placed it on the table in front of him. If all else failed, maybe this would help get his feet under him. Though truth be told, my hopes were quite low and for now I feared I would just have to live with the fact of his prolonged uselessness for the rest of the day. He grumbled something unintelligible under his breath – probably something about elves and their cursed sense of hearing – but when I led him to the table and gently pushed him to his stool, he sat down and emptied three brimming cups of coffee with barely any time to breathe in between. Afterwards, admittedly, he was not back to normal (not by far, yet) but at least he looked vaguely accountable for his actions and not as if he would close his eyes and just fall asleep on the spot any second from now.

“Talos, how could something like that happen to me,” he groaned, his head in his hands. “I feel terrible.”

“Should have considered that before going off drinking with Zulu. Nothing good ever comes out of that, you should know that better than anyone else by now. Even I know when to make a berth around that man and what to do when he asks me out to party at night.” I shrugged my shoulders non-chalantly. “Though if it makes you feel any better, he´s probably even worse off than you are right now.”

“It doesn’t, actually,” moaned Ra, head still in his hands.

“Then I cannot possibly make matters worse if I tell you what I have in mind for you today,” I declared as cheerfully as possible. “Regarding the weather, I decided it was high time to remodel the porch. We have at least ten more hours until the sun goes down again and there´s some heaaavy lifting to do. Shall we get to it?”

“Oh, gods,” groaned Ra again, voice suddenly oddly and curiously pitched. “I think I´m gonna throw up.” 

“In that case, please heave your cadaver outside and aim for the waters. I just cleaned in here yesterday.”

“You know, sometimes you´re just mean.” 

“No,” I contradicted. “Right now, I am smug. There´s a difference. After all, I did tell you so. Should have listened to the elf in your heart.”

“Whatever,” Ra sighed and heaved himself upright, both hands on the table which was shaking by the time Ra had sorted out which of his limbs were made for walking and which not. “I´m gonna have a bath,” he declared glumly and started to slink off towards the sunlit door.

“Good idea,” I muttered, though he didn’t seem to hear me anymore. Uncoordinatedly pulling off his shirt on his staggering way and almost bumping his head into the wooden pillars lining the living room walls as he fumbled with the fabric, he gathered up some random clothes that lay in a discarded, crumpled pile next to his side of the bed and exited the house under quite some grumbling and no small measure of groaning in between. 

We would very soon have our very own and private pool, but until the masonry was finished and we could actually use the little grotto underneath our spare room floor in the story below, we´d have to do it like most other people in this town and use the public lake to wash up in. True enough, the waters in the canals running all throughout the city and threading the marketplace, separating the more affluent quarters from the poorer ones, were more often than not putrid and drowning in waste, but the farther along its shores you moved, the cleaner the water got, and frequent mountainous streams joining Lake Honrich ever so often helped suffuse the otherwise indelible marks of human pollution. Personally, I tried to avoid the sometimes-reeking waters of the lake surrounding the immediate vicinity of Riften altogether and usually made straight for the closest of said quick streaming rivers, undefiled and uncorrupted by anyone. And albeit the journey there counted as barely more than a stroll for my horse, on foot it was almost half an hour from here. But maybe a brisk walk on fresh air was just the thing Ralof needed most right now, so my sense of pity was currently otherwise engaged entirely. If he didn’t look so pathetic, I would actually have been able to have a hearty laugh at his expense. 

As it was, though, I was glad as soon as he had bumped his way to the door and was ready to leave – making a mental note to check on him soon, lest he fall asleep again under the waters and drowned out of sheer intoxication – hoping against all hope that this morning would serve him as a lingering reminder and keep him from the need to prove himself to Zulu or to anyone else in the near future. The door fell shut as he kicked it with a heel but that didn’t prevent me from hearing him stumble on the wooden steps of the porch as he continued his wobbly way towards the water. I raised my eyebrows at my coffee mug as if it had just made an all new and utterly gripping point until I heard another clatter, a muffled curse and, counting one second, two seconds, I cocked my head in anticipation until there was a big splash and a corresponding, sudden gasp. So much for that. 

I smiled to myself as I got up and started to prepare some food for some misty future time when my hopefully inebriated and by then probably also pretty wet partner, resurfaced, would find his way back in and we could talk about what needed to be done with the house. And about Zulu. I could barely wait to get started. 

 

∞∞∞

 

“So,” Ra started and with a thoughtful expression on his face he studied me with eyes wide open. The way only he could look at me, making me feel special every single time his eyes came to rest on mine. “I´ve done some thinking…”

“Oh gods,” I moaned in jest, rolling my eyes at him. “Not thinking again. In my experience, this never ends well for me.”

Ra gently slapped me with the soft end of the pair of gloves he was just now pulling from his tired fingers, before I queued behind him, both of us ascending the stairs to see what (if anything at all) Zulu had been up to all day. 

“Hey,” he said accusingly. “I´m not that bad.”

Dusk deemed it closer to night than to day and we were both tired as hell, but I also felt accomplished. We had remodelled the entire boat bridge in a single afternoon and the house looked as good as new from the outside. Now, we only would have to paint it to make proof against bad weather and we would be as safe in there as in our mother´s wombs – or safer, as I liked to think of both of our special cases. Ralof looked even worse for wear than I did – drooping eyes, frequent breaks to catch his breath and an all-too-present aversion to all sorts of bright light during the entire day bore witness still to a considerable amount of unease about what happened last night – though I still did not feel guilty in the least about setting him straight to work again. 

“You´re pretty bad sometimes,” I teased, trying not to get carried away by the sight of his intermittently shaking butt right in my line of sight, on our slow way upstairs, “but lucky for me I quite like bad boys in general.” Ra groaned and I couldn’t help but focus on what these lovely noises did to my entire neural system. “I´d prove it to you,” I continued alluringly, slapping his behind, “but… you know… Zulu.” 

“Ri-ight,” nodded Ra haltingly.

“Anyways. So, what have you been thinking about?”

“Well, seeing as this seems the sort of town where everybody knows about everyone else and people need the support of their neighbours to feel safe and accomplished in times like these, which is actually a very traditional concept and one I honestly approve of, I think we should make the round and introduce ourselves. At least with our direct neighbours. After all, we´ve been here more than a week and barely know anyone. And I´d much rather get to know them personally, than hearing about who clipped whose rose bushes on the market place the other day or trying to disprove their ridiculous gossip about me and my life without ever having set eyes on anyone.”

“Really? Is that what Nords do?”, I inquired, quizzically.

“No, it´s what humans do, Tabu. It´s called being socially functioning? Besides, it´s a nice gesture,” said Ra. “I think it would be nice to know whom you can trust and whom not. And, just in case, whom you can turn to if you ever need help. That would be good, don’t you think?”

“How about you turn to your most beloved partner if you ever need help?”, I suggested in a feeble attempt to talk myself out of this. “I can help you.”

“Not if you´re dead.”

“Woha,” I said, hopping onto the porch next to him. “If that doesn’t kill the mood, I don’t know what can. Do you do that often? Think about my death and stuff? About what happens, what you´ll do if you finally get rid of me? You do know that elves tend to get hundreds of years old, right? So, I´ll probably outlive you, darling.”

“I don’t wanna get rid of you,” Ra was quick to object, turning my half-hearted joke into something much more serious with barely any effort at all and his eyes shone with intent purpose as they ravaged over me. He took hold of my shoulders, quickly pulling me in. We stood so close together now that I could feel Ra´s breath on my face, his sweet scent pooling beneath my nostrils, the heat coming off his body permeating through his clothes and my body absorbing it as if his spirit was the only thing still keeping it going. I wanted to shrug out of his grasp, to talk back at him, but all of a sudden he was neither in a funny nor a carefree mood any more and I felt as much as I could see that he was slowly building up to something. His eyes burned into mine when he spoke next. 

“Not ever. Imagining the day we may be parted by death is one of my worst and most recurring nightmares. Though I know that if it happens,” he closed his eyes, “when it happens, I will be the one to go first. It doesn’t happen very often, but yes, I do dream of it, occasionally. And every time I wake from it my heart is completely shattered. Like you have been in there for years, you belong right there, and when you are gone my heart is missing its most crucial part. The pain is worse than anything I have ever had to endure before. Every single time I feel the loss, over and over again, and it gets worse every time.” I had almost instantly gone limp in his arms and he threaded a finger softly through some loose strands of my hair now, pulling them back behind my pointy ears. “I cannot imagine living without you, Tabu. Not ever again. So yes, I do occasionally think about what would happen if you were to leave me – you can hardly blame myself for it, not with your kind of profession – but know that I thank Talos and every supernatural being in this dimension every time I wake and see you lying next to me, that I am the happiest man on earth to realize my unconsciousness was just playing its tricks again, that you are still there, with me.”

“Oh Ralof,” I whispered, my voice suddenly catching in my throat, my knees unsteady and wobbly like they never were, not even in the most hopeless of fights, except when he was doing it again. When he was giving me this look. This emotion, this feeling. I traced a finger along his stubbly cheek – it was even scruffier than usual, he had forgotten to shave this morning. “I didn’t mean it, you know that, right? It was a joke. I love you.”

“I know.” He smiled softly. “So, will you come along then?”

I groaned. “Do we really have to? Couldn’t we like, I don’t know, just print flyers and have them distributed on the marketplace on a market day? It could even be showing pictures of our faces, so we wouldn’t have to talk to anyone ever again. Everyone would know immediately who we were all without going around and stupidly keeping people from their business. You know how I am when it comes to interacting with strangers.”

“Yes, I think I remember. But we are honest citizens, paying for rent and creature comforts as straightforwardly as everyone else, not dishonest thieves or wanted murderers. We are no criminals. We can talk to people.” 

“Well… technically speaking– ,” I started, but Ra was quick to interrupt me.

“I know, I know. You are both, I get it. But that´s not what I meant. After all, you are a soldier for hire. And sometimes a thief… And occasionally even an odd assassin, I guess, but not the arbitrary kind, and that´s what´s important.”

“If you say so.” Ra raised his eyebrows at me. “I mean, I´m not gonna object you there if that´s what gets you to sleep at night, but I may indeed be considered a wanted murderer in certain parts of the country. Arbitrary, as you say. Albeit, naturally, for the vilest reasons. Technically, I never did anything wrong.”

“Except you – you know – killed some guys.”

“Yeah,” I nodded deep in thought. “There´s that…”

“We are not gonna distribute flyers,” Ra terminated without giving my objections any further notice. “We are going to talk to people, just like humans are supposed to do. And elves too,” he quickly added, before I could make use of this specially crafted loophole to dodge his logic. 

Cause, as much as I loved him and his straightforwardness in a multitude of situations, I really saw absolutely no sense in stupidly trudging from house to house and discount people´s disdain with a light shrug, distributing cookies. In my mind, there was no benefit in either of it, neither for me nor for the cookies. And I did not even bake particularly often nor was I usually particularly passionate about that, but whenever I did, I felt very protective of my creations and was not prepared to share them with people who secretly thought me deviant. I had long ago promised myself never to waste any time or effort on people who did not benefit me in any way, and I did not plan to start betraying this self-made resolution now, after almost three hundred years of social awkwardness. But otherwise, maybe Ralof was right and it was time now to take the unpleasant leap in fate´s arms and see what life could hold in store for me if I allowed Ralof to influence even this side of me. After all, he seemed to be rather well received by most people he encountered and usually managed quite well on his own to entangle folk in his natural humour and good spirits. Though he probably didn’t need a grumpy elf to ruin this new start in a new town for him.

“If you´re so fired up for it, you could just as well make the round by yourself. Give everybody my warmest regards, I am heartbroken not to make it, but there is important stuff at home to be taken care of.”

“Like what?”, asked Ralof, sounding genuinely curious.

“Like… Zulu?”, I offered, naming the one thing in our house I could spontaneously think of that one should never ever let out of one´s eyesight, not even for the briefest of seconds.

“Zulu´s an adult,” Ra was quick to give back, and he didn’t even give me any time to break out in hysterical laughter, but continued faster than I could react to this unlikeliest of arguments. “Well, basically. And besides, I don’t want to go alone. It really only makes sense if we introduce ourselves together. After all, at the end of the day, that´s where we belong, isn’t it? Together?” 

We had finally reached the house and Ra closed the door, immediately setting about to get changed for our little enterprise, but as soon as he had shed his dusty tunic and was rummaging in the chaos of our hitherto only stack of clothing for a fitting new one, I stood next to him like petrified and couldn´t help but stare. He stood before me with his lovely tanned upper body bared all the way and on full display for my very instincts. All of a sudden, I could feel my insides hollow out and scream to be filled again with Ralof. By him, by the gentle touch of his cautious hands on my skin, by the contact of his soft lips on mine, by his nimble tongue giving me goose bumps when and wherever it touched my body and in whatever unspeakable things it did to me. By some other, more meaningful things that spoke of a more animalistic notion and attested to men´s most basic wants and needs. I could see knots of muscle against the backdrop of his freckled neck and the jumping motion they did whenever he moved his head only the barest of fractions. I could see the soft curls of hair where the tips had gotten wet, frizzling from sweat and perspiration and the soft curve of his mouth when he caught me staring at his body and raised his brows quizzically.

“What?”, he asked coyly, but I didn’t answer. Instead, I took both of his arms in my hands, arresting them in mid-motion and moved in on him before he had any time to object. Not that he seemed to want to...

Pressing him hard with my mouth, I steered him through the joint living-and-sleeping-room area with barely hidden purpose until we stood in front of the duvet bed, attacking his lips ferociously with my tongue.   
“It is,” I whispered between sparking kisses. “As always. But before we go, may I suggest something else altogether? Some kind of motivation to lift both of our spirits for the ensuing strife?” 

“I don’t necessarily agree with this rather dark choice of words, but if that´s the way to convince you,” smiled Ralof against me and traced a warm finger along the bare inside of my arm. “I am all for motivation.”

“You can always convince me,” I said. “By just being you. By being as perfect as the gods have made you.” I slipped a hand around his broad hips and he didn’t complain as I pressed him even tighter against me and worked hard towards kissing his breath away. “By being mine. Forever.”

And then we tumbled onto the bed with a soft thud and a barely disrupting rustle of silken sheets. The room was bright with petroleum light from a lamp on the nightstand and candles in various states of exhaustion distributed more or less evenly among the shelves all around. The last rays of sun just disappeared over the horizon as I lowered myself down on top of him. I trailed the ridges of Ralof’s abs under my fingertips while he was quick to free me of shirt and pants alike in barely more than one single, hungry motion. Very soon I felt very much ready to lose myself in him, at long last. It had been weeks since the two of us had had occasion to truly be at it, Zulu as a constant guest under our roof and a loyal travelling companion by our side even before that a not really helpful spark in respect to any sort romantic action whatsoever. Thus, my entire body burned with passionate desire. Ralof clearly wasn’t faring any better, for he too, was breathing heavily and every odd second his eyes would flutter shut in ecstasy, marking my passage over one of his many sensitive spots.

I smiled at Ra when I was basically naked as well and, gently taking hold of my shoulders after both accelerating my heartrate and at the same time stealing my breath away with a single kiss of his marvellously nimble lips, he rolled over and on top of me. As always, his bigger weight rested on me neither oppressively nor uncomfortably, but was distributed evenly between us and Ralof was conscientious and careful. Loving, just as always. He made no sudden moves, no harsh advances, just stroked me softly, probed and caressed, loved me deeply. Though he really could have, for all my body screamed for him. So loud, in fact, that I was not any longer sure if I was just imagining its crying voice inside my head. He cupped my head and traced his index fingers along the sharply pointed tips of my ears, knowing this would make me (any elf, really) writhe with pleasure. He really had come a long way from being the shy and frightened soldier, back at the very beginnings of our affair, when he still had had come to terms with what he was feeling, with what we were doing. Now, though, years later, he seemed like a completely new, a transformed, a happier version of his former self. He had learned so much, we had both learned a lot. Yet, there was still enough Ralof left in him in order to make me love him more than I have ever loved any other person in my life, but at the same time he appeared more grown-up, surer of himself, more… mature. It made for a truly intoxicating impression of perfection.

His hand pulled away the last obstructing strings remaining on me, reaching down into the insides of my linen underwear. I groaned against the side of his neck as he began to caress me and slowly trailed swirling lines across my chest with his other hand simultaneously. I felt him hard against my thigh and knew that this time neither of us would last particularly long. Burying my hands in his hair, I shifted ever so slightly and offered myself to him completely. I was just getting ready to receive him, preparing myself for the inevitable and already relishing in the rapture of his love-making, when Ralof started. He gave a gasp, pulled away abruptly. I sat bolt upright in bed as quickly as he had, alarmed by the sudden change in atmosphere and puzzled by a snorting sound directly behind my passionate lover.

Suddenly, we were not quite so alone any more. “You do realize that I can hear you, guys? And see very clearly the things you are on the verge of doing, right? I´m standing right here.” 

Zulu appeared in the transition to the kitchen and I had to consult and seriously reproach my instincts how in all the gods´ names they could have failed before and failed me again right now in pointing out his presence to me. He must have been in the kitchen all along. Never particularly subtle or considerate in anything he did, usually Zulu could be heard from far-away, distant Cyrodiil, and especially so for elven ears. I had genuinely thought the house extinct. It had to be Ralof, I thought, I really couldn’t explain it any other way. He had to be the only man on this earth who managed time and again to turn my head so completely that I even forgot to pay attention to my surroundings which in truth no sane elf should let out of his supernatural sight. Ever.

“No, we actually were not,” grumbled Ralof as he rolled away from me and jumped to his feet, like a lion disrupted at napping in his most comfortable spot or kept from pursuing his most favourite pastime. While he was quick to cover himself, I needed some more time to fumble for the discarded pants lying next to me on the floor. “We were kind of… busy,” he informed his friend while struggling for composure. My only regret was that – unlike any lion – he didn’t jump on the intruding rival and bit its head off, as should be nature´s true course. 

“Yeah, I get that. I can see it clearly. Though I really wish I hadn’t. I´m not drunk enough by far to be ready for this kind of thing. You could have warned me. Should have, really. Next time, try putting up a sign.”  
“Need I remind you, that you are lodging in our house?”, I grumbled.

“Still,” Zulu persisted with a shrug. He had a fuzz of a beard and dark rings under his eyes, which corroborated my theory of drunken obsceneness the night before. Frankly, I felt myself genuinely puzzled to find him alive and talking at all. “There are some things no man should ever have to be put through.” He gestured at the both of us erratically. “I´ll never be able to un-see all of this. I´m scarred for life!” 

Though to his credit, maybe, maybe not, he seemed neither particularly bothered nor particularly upset at having walked in on us like this. He rather displayed an air of honest and profound indifference which would usually have made me hug him tight and praise his acceptance and support. Now, however, I contemplated how best to stab him in the back without Ra noticing and the city guards discovering his bloated corpse floating in the lake early tomorrow morning.

“I´ll have to go see Ulfric´s therapists soon, if you guys don’t watch it,” Zulu continued sardonically, “I hear the king´s been keeping them quite busy, lately, but I bet he never had occasion to find his best friend in bed with another man.” 

I had to fight hard against the sudden urge to vomit, imagining Ulfric walking in on Galmar in bed with just about anyone. The wild-headed man was an icon of the revolution for sure, a splendid soldier, a more than capable fighter and an excellently smart commander of the Nordic troops on top of that, but for me he was also the living image of a turn-off.

“This is a private area. If you don’t like what´s going on inside of it, just look the other way,” contributed Ralof. I grimaced, not at all comfortable with the thought, much less the underlying implication, though for once luckily neither Zulu nor Ra did not seem intent on pressing their point.

“Or else, go away,” I added quickly. “Period. You could also always just leave, you know.”

“I… uh, actually just wanted to ask what you guys were planning for dinner?”, fumbled Zulu, quickly recovering and a lewdly grinning facial expression apparently the most embarrassed the staunch Stormcloak would ever get. “I´m… uh, kind of… hungry?”

“Well, I am not,” I huffed and pushed to my feet. “Just suit yourself.”

“Oh, come on Haithabu. Stop griping,” the other man went on. “I just wanted to be nice. I mean, you can really go for it, guys, go on, for all I care, I am nothing if not supportive to the sexual aspect of your relationship. It´s the most important aspect in any relationship as you must know is my personal opinion, but I´d appreciate a short notice in advance nonetheless to get myself out of your firing range, get me?”

“You are this close to actually getting me, that I can promise,” I growled. “If I were you, I´d be worried about my firing range with good reason. You know I´m a deadly shot, entirely disregarding the projectile, don’t you?”

“No doubt,” frowned Zulu, indicating my still considerable nakedness. “Poor Ralof. Which is why I am so intent on keeping out of all of… this.”

“Why don’t you just go to the tavern and radiate all of your annoying gaiety there? I´m sure people would be more appreciative of your vile sense of humour in an establishment like that”, I said while I re-collected my clothes. Sad as it was, but I suddenly didn’t feel up to any of it anymore and decided to postpone any romance for now, considering it rather a thing for later. Maybe...

Ralof too had already donned most of his everyday clothes once more – loose tunic to obscure the well-built, hunky man beneath and a midnight blue cape with three silver stripes to mark his rank as captain in this country´s most prominent forces of the day – and was waving at me to follow suit. His cheeks were flushed and he didn’t meet either Zulu´s nor my eyes like he usually would. He looked for all the world as if he wanted to sink into the newly made up, still considerably dusty floorboards and seemed not to be able to wait to get out of here and leave behind his leering best friend who was leaning against our countertop as if he belonged there and owned the house. He even had the audacity to deride us with a superior smile as if he wanted to let us know just how much he gloated over walking in on us like this. As if no one had ever walked in on him during sex! I was fairly certain – given Zulu´s history – that it had happened more often to him in the last couple of months than it had to me in over two hundred years of a not even close to frugal life. 

“Thank you very much, but I´ll gladly renounce. The only ones radiating any sort of gay-ness right now are you two, and that´s already quite enough for me to handle as it is. Besides, you really shouldn’t be drinking on an empty stomach. Reduces the limit of tolerance for all sorts of liquor and the like, you see. Believe me, drinking is as much a science as it is an art.”

“You don’t say,” I huffed. “I´d very much appreciate if you didn’t destroy my boyfriend with your stupid art, then.”

Zulu raised an eyebrow, as always utterly unperturbed. “Why, the way I see things, everything´s still up and working out great for him, isn’t it?”

While Ra gave a little, embarrassed cough, I didn’t even try to hold in a frustrated growl as I fumbled for my tangled pieces of attire that made Zulu raise his eyebrows even further. I was suddenly kind of sad both Ra and I usually stacked our weapons in a closet next to the front door of the house and there was nothing sharp and pointy around I could throw at Zulu. On edge like only Ralof could ever get me, I had to struggle to get my heated-up body back to focus even on the simplest of tasks. Still crying for Ra´s gentle love, I had trouble even with the most basic objectives and couldn’t even focus on lacing up clothes, much less such complicated contraptions as Elsweyrian tunics, which were very much in fashion in Skyrim lately. Nobody deprived me of what my body craved for so urgently and came off unscathed. Especially not if that special something was relief and Ralof had been the one so close to giving it to me.

“When did you even get up?”, I wanted to know impatiently, as much out of a need to change the subject as out of actual curiosity. “It´s almost dark again. Did you seriously sleep all day long?” 

Zulu´s been a no-show on everything work related, today – even though technically, Ra had originally only invited him to stay to help us get finished with the house before winter invaded for good. Yet, for the most part of the afternoon, I had been able to hear him well enough (snoring, moaning and tossing and turning). I had not even had to concentrate particularly much even though working with Ralof outside had not been the most tranquil business in itself. About an hour ago, though, the noise had stopped, and I had all but forgotten about him.

Zulu scratched his head and beard, black frills of thick hair sticking out in every direction, but didn’t look particularly surprised to find himself in this particular situation. “I… don’t know. Half an hour ago, maybe? It was just starting to get dark when I woke. I could hear you guys outside, though.”

“You… just… argh,” I exclaimed, for Ralof´s sake really trying but not actually entirely succeeding in holding back my indignance. “You exhaust me! So you´re telling me you lay in bed lazily nursing and sleeping off your hangover all day long, while the two of us have been working our asses off out there and now you expect us to make food for you?”

Zulu looked to Ralof, then to me, and back to his best friend. Both shrugged at exactly the same time. “Uh… yeah, I guess. Kind of. I´d go help hunt but… you know,” he said, indicating the now rapidly blackening window panes. “Night… and all. So, what´s for dinner?”

“You´re a pain in the ass,” I grunted. “Worse even than a five-year-old child!”

“I am almost positive that I am not. Do you even know any five-year-old kids?” Cocking his head, Zulu smiled at me, his white teeth flashing in a stark contrast to his dark facial hair. 

“Oh, shut up, muscles,” I growled, pushing a clumsy leg through my pants and struggling to find the opening with maintaining as much sovereign dignity as possible, given the circumstances. “You really are the most obnoxious and inappropriate person I´ve ever met.”

“Aww, I like it when he gets all grumpy and mean,” Zulu answered with false honey in his voice, winking at Ralof quickly, whose face I couldn’t see. “It´s the only expression of love he knows, isn’t it? But, just between the two of us, I love you too, Haithabu. With all my heart and soul. Never doubt that for a single second.”

“If you don’t watch it, I´ll have you for dinner tonight. I feel the overpowering need to kill someone right now!”

“Oh yeah?”, Zulu teased playfully. “I don’t think you´d have even the ghost of a chance against me, but I´d still like to watch you try. Always one for some entertainment before I eat. Keeps a man sporty, you know?” 

“Well, then, try me!” I had already leaped to my feet, growling, crouching low like a rabid feline when Ralof stepped between us. Zulu truly brought out the worst in his friends, there was absolutely no doubt about that any more.

“Stop fighting, you two,” Ralof said and tried to hide an indulgent grin. He took me by the arm and clapped Zulu on the shoulder. “Nice seeing the two of you trying to get along and socialize, but Tabu and I actually have an errand to run. Well, sort of. It´ll probably be a while till we´re back, so if you really want to make yourself useful, Zu, please be our guest and do prepare dinner.” He quickly looked my way and I relaxed reluctantly. “There´s still enough in the pantry downstairs for a vegetable stew or some such. And Tabu shot something this morning. You should be able to work with that. I´m starving, actually.”

True enough, a couple of minutes ago I hadn’t seen all that much appetite for actual food in him but rather an entire other form of hunger burning incandescent veins of passionate fire through the ocean blue of his eyes, but well, whatever. He just wanted to be nice to both of us, I guess, and who could resent him for that? The ability to pour oil on troubled waters and calm the waves no matter how high they clashed was one of his most adorable qualities and I admired the natural ease with which he navigated all kinds of situations like this one. The naturalness to deescalate whenever necessary, his own ability to remain completely level-headed and unswaying whenever he tried to accommodate any sort of quarrel, be it between friends or enemies, all of it amazed me anew, time and again. Here was a man so selfless, so immersed in the well-being of others, that he gladly swallowed both his pride and his own ego, to make the world a better place. Every day, always in his life. In so many different ways, Ralof was the most honourable man I knew. 

“All right, then,” I sighed, for now giving up on my intended course of the evening for good. It is true, hope dies last, but a man still knows when he´s beaten. “Let´s go.” 

Passing Zulu on the way to the front door, who seemed to take over the kitchen for good now, I growled: “This is not over yet, muscles. Beware of shots from the dark.” Then, Ralof pulled me outside. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see Zulu grinning and he stuck out his tongue after me. With an all new kind of resignation I began to seriously doubt my authority in my own four walls. Pfh, Nords!, I thought, They were all insane!

 

∞∞∞

 

Ra was still in a silent mode of re-composing as we crossed the cobbled street together – though technically nothing bad had happened, we hadn’t even really gotten started yet and I didn’t comprehend what exactly he could be so embarrassed about. Furthermore, I was pretty sure Zulu had done what he had done very much on purpose, so I decided not to feel particularly sorry for him right now. Thus, still occupied with and deeply in thought about how best to manage kicking out the best friend of your boyfriend without incurring eternal wrath from both parties at once, we knocked on the tallest building in our street, just opposite of our new homestead. 

The house was – as most structures were in Riften – built entirely out of big slabs of light and square wood and towered over our building by at least two stories. It was huge, even measured by Markath’s dwarven standards, and especially so standing in quiet and shy, rural Riften. The windows looked to be leaded and you couldn’t possibly make out anything of what was at this moment transpiring inside, not even with keen eyesight such as mine. There was no sign announcing the name of the establishment (or its underlying purpose, for that matter), but that it definitely had to be a public place of gathering of some sort had immediately been apparent to me from the very beginning as there have been (mostly) men frequenting the facility (preferentially) at dusk and dawn or under the cover of night for the past few days. I had seen that from our kitchen window. A tavern without a name, maybe, though this seemed to me quite contrary to any economical premises of attracting new customers by inventive advertisement measures and a negligent waste of possibilities, but maybe it was all just a sign of class. I mean, who could possibly say? After all, I was hardly what could be called particularly classy myself. Neither was Ra, for that matter. 

The door opened with a sudden jerk even before Ralof had finished his mechanical rapping and he started when a young, fetching blonde emerged into the pre-dark glow of dusk and glowered at us out of the dim, candle-lit interior, looking as minatory as if she wanted to eat us alive.

“There are gals and lassies downstairs and some ladies and more exclusive women upstairs for the ones who are a bit more tasteful and affluent.” She jerked her head commandingly. “Downstairs will be two golden coins an hour, up it will be ten. A shared girl will be three and fifteen respectively. As long as you linger inside our establishment, you are expected to conduct according to the county´s laws and regulations and will be persecuted in accordance with penal code fifteen of the esteemed High King Ulfric of Skyrim, should you choose to override local authority. Maximum duration of stay is six hours and you may not bring any weapons. Food and drink is equally forbidden and you´d have to pay extra for whatever you wish to consume while you are in here. So, what´s it gonna be for you?”

“I… hm, we… eh– what?” Ra stuttered, looking for all the world like a lost teenager stumbling into dealings a number too big for him, though of course he was by far the biggest man I knew. He goggled at the curvy figure in the doorway open-mouthed and as if he had never seen her kind before, though to her credit the woman didn’t seem awfully put off by this. She probably saw much worse than Ralof every day.

“Oh, you are none of these guys, are you?”, the blonde wanted to know with an insincere smile and a touch of a frown on her smooth forehead. She dropped her voice to a conspiring whisper. “We have boys too. But that´ll cost you extra, they´re much harder to obtain though admittedly a hell of a lot easier to maintain, if you get my drift.” She looked Ralof up and down with a barely concealed sneer. “Also, officers and all other kinds of government officials are not allowed in here.” She spat to the side, a big, disgusting glob of spittle right into the lovely flowery beside the door. “Civil rights code paragraph twenty-three sub-section four. You´d have to change first.”

“I… eh – what?”, was yet again all Ra managed.

“No, no, no” I assured the mean-eyed pimp hastily – because I suddenly realized what exactly the trade of this big building was and what that would make the handsome female standing in front of us. “We are none of these guys. Don’t worry.” I felt the need to jump in quickly and safe (or rather appease) the entire situation before it got truly awkward. Not that it wasn’t awkward enough right now as it was. “What he wanted to say, or rather, what he wanted us to say, was merely hi.”

“Hi,” breathed Ra rather tonelessly and half-lifted his hand in a feeble attempt to appear at least vaguely dignified. Didn’t work so well for him.

“Hi,” said the blonde landlady haltingly and with a deepening frown on her quite lovely face. 

She was big, even by Nordern standards, though still nimble and graceful in her every motion. She had small but keen and wary eyes and some random freckles on her skin covering the bridge of her nose. Her fair hair was pulled back in a loose bun, though it was messy and more strands than not had escaped its tight confines and were now caressing her oval face in the gentle breeze. She wore an accentuated, tight blue dress with a multitude of colourful shawls draped around her body and slippers that left bare her painted toe nails. They were red, like blood.

“Hi,” I repeated and rolled my eyes internally at Ra´s crazy suggestion. I had known all along that no good would come out of this, and look where his gullibility had led us! “We just wanted to present ourselves. Sort of. My name is Haithabu, and this is Ralof. You see, we moved in next doors a few days ago, into this lovely, beautiful little house back there.” 

I gestured but she didn’t seem to want to follow my hand, just continued to eye both of us up and down warily. True enough, we were not our most presentable selves right now, not after Ra´s debauchery last night and our conjoined efforts of the day trying to make the house and the porch overlooking Lake Honrich more presentable. But on the other hand, we were not quite as disrespectable as she wanted to make us believe. I felt slightly let down and offended at her general attitude of condescension towards us. We certainly did not deserve quite such a hard measure of scrutiny. Especially not in her field of expertise.

“Wait,” the pimp said and narrowed her eyes at me. “Didn’t I see you before? You were the one disturbing the night-time peace yesterday, weren’t you?”

“Well, it wasn’t technically speaking, you know, me,” I defended myself weakly. Ra swerved his eyes and swivelled his head, regarding me as if I´d just spoken in Daedric. 

“You…here… what?”, he gasped in a horrified hoarse whisper, utterly useless, as the blonde souteneur stood right there in front of us and could hear every word we were exchanging under our breaths.  
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I wasn’t here. I told you, she came by thinking we were doing construction work.”

“In clear disaccord with the civil law codex. Night-time peace is not to be broken under no circumstances and exceptions have to be obtained by official authority. Paragraph twenty-three sub section eight.”  
“Uh–huh,” Ra nodded, vaguely puzzled.

“Well, as I already told you tonight, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t doing any construction, wasn’t doing anything unlawful. Neither did my partner, so to say.” 

“So, are you gonna buy someone now or not?”, she demanded after a while spent in a pretty uncomfortable silence. “I have business to attend to, I cannot afford to dilly-dally with government officials. Busy night, you see. You don’t have a warranty, do you?”

“I… uh… oh,” said Ra.

“Don’t worry, we are not here on any official business. Also, we really do not want to come in. We won´t hold you up any longer. By now I think I proved my point abundantly,” I said. “Thanks for your time, though. Very nice of you to greet us so courteously.” I nodded, in a friendly attempt to retreat with as much dignity as the situation allowed. The blonde seemed neither to appreciate my efforts nor to care particularly much.

“Next time don’t wear official livery,” she sniffed and turned on her heels in a rustle of bright shawls. “It is not well liked around here.” Then, declaring the interview over, she stormed off and hurled the door shut after her.

“Great,” I said as soon as the door had slammed into our faces and turned to face a still put off Ra, dripping irony sharpening the edges of my words. “We live next to a brothel. Now that´s just awesome!” I turned and stalked past Ralof towards the other side of the road. “I´m gonna have to have a serious word with Anuriel about this. It´s no wonder she sold me the property for a discount. What a neighbourhood! So much for special services for her Jarl. Should have known it! Nobody ever seems to trust an elf. Our poor lavender bushes!”

Ra, still in an apparent state of shock – had he never seen a house like this before? Or was it rather something else that put him off? – shook his head. “What do our lavender bushes have to do with prostitutes?”

“Where do you think the logy customers will stumble to in order to empty their bowels after they have attempted at satisfaction?” 

I gesticulated expressively and both our glances lingered for just a second too long on the thin strip of bare earth behind our house we had not yet tilled, directly joined by the high walls of the city wall on two and the backside of our own mansion on the third side, and the loose ring of lavender bushes standing around it in something roughly approximating a perfect circle. It was Ralof´s most favourite flower and its fragrance always reminded me of the smell of him when he stepped out of the bathtub, so it had been one of the first modifications I had attempted last week. Also, I liked the modest lilac of their blossoms. Unfortunately, though, there wasn’t even a gate or a fence deterring exuberant revellers.

Ra goggled at me. “Who vomits after sex?”

I glared at him. “How about, someone who got stone drunk in the tavern just opposite the street before he had sex. Keep up, Ralof! Not everyone is as gentle as I am. And I´m telling you, it´s all gonna end up in our lovely lavender bushes. One way or the other.”

“Urgh.” Ralof made a face and seemed to seriously consider throwing up himself for a few deliberating moments. 

“Urgh indeed.” I snorted. “It is never wise to come too close to such a place of sex. Much less, live next to one. This won´t be the last we hear of this establishment, I promise you.”

“Can´t be particularly good sex then,” noted Ra with an air of mildly concerned pity.

“No. No, it probably is not,” I said, rolling my eyes again – this time not only internally – at his sometimes close to unnerving display of naïvety. “But then, it is a house of prostitution, after all.”

“What, and the sex cannot be good there? Why does the one have to except the other?”

“I really can´t believe I am having this conversation with you right now, but what in Talos´ name makes you think it would be good?”

“Well, they do have the practice there, don’t they?”

“Seriously?”

Ra shrugged his shoulders, kind of throwing his hands up in the air in a somewhat helpless gesture right afterwards. “Well, I don’t know. I´m just saying…”

“Have you ever been in a brothel and made a good experience?”

Ralof´s face contorted into what could most likely be described as a truly disgusted mask of horror. “No,” he sounded as if I´d just mortally offended him. “No, no, of course not. But then, I have never actually been to a brothel, myself, so I really wouldn’t know.” 

“Never? You mean like, ever?” I had a very hard time believing that, especially with comrades as bawdy and salacious as his Stormcloaks were. 

“No.”

“Oh, come on. I don’t believe you. Not even once? To try it out? You can tell me.”

“By Talos… no! Why on earth would I want to do that?”

“It´s what every man does in this country. Sooner or later. Why do you think there are so many of them in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Ra answered vehemently. “All I know is that I´ve never been to one. And I certainly didn’t want to try it out.”

“Not even with some of your not so pious Stormcloak friends?” I huffed. “You can´t possibly make me believe that. I mean, come on, you´re all men, don’t tell me you´ve never been on a trip like that. If only just to participate? To belong? Everybody strives to fit in somewhere at some point. It´s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Still no.” Ra regarded me with a very serious expression. “You know how I feel about women.”

Of course I remembered what he had told me about his history with the opposite sex, back during our first date. It was a story very hard to ever forget again, no matter how much one wanted to, but I didn’t want to remind him of what he had had to go through and what Igna meant to him, much less think of her myself, so I let the matter drop with a shrug.

“They also have boys, sometimes. You heard what she said.”

“No– Tabu, stop it. You are the first man I´ve ever slept with, and I don’t feel like justifying myself for it. I´ve just never really wanted to, before, okay? But I promise you, if you keep going on like this, you will definitely not be the last one. This conversation is making me uncomfortable.”

“I just hadn’t realized you could be friends with someone like Zulu and miss one single house of prostitution in the entire country,” I mumbled. “It seems a truly contradictory proposition to me.”

“What did you say?”

I waved a hand, deciding to leave well alone. Maybe it was better, that way. After all, I was probably one of a very limited number of men in this country who could say he had absolutely no doubt about his partner´s fidelity. I probably shouldn’t give him a hard time about it now. “Never mind, it was nothing.”

We made our way past the pleasure house, me with a still fairly disgusted expression on my face, Ralof with a deeply pondering one, and started checking out the other houses in the close vicinity. Though I for my part had to confess I was rather daunted by this point. If the first establishment we barged into had been a brothel, did I really want to see what the next held in store for us?

“What about over there?”, I asked, picking out a big, blocky building on the other side of the canal, mirroring the house of prostitution on our side, though its exterior looked a lot more inviting and there was actually a sign announcing the town´s most frequented inn.

I´d already heard a lot of it even way before I first came here. It had quite the reputation indeed and whenever I´d been in there before, I had never left without a full stomach and a new assignment or quest to complete. There was a slender wooden bridge arching over the man-made chasm of Riften´s main canal, what had once been the city´s artery of trade and of life, but since the thieves´ guild had extended their influence ever so far, it was bogged down and filled with more and more waste nobody felt responsible for clearing up. The water gates were constantly closed these days and no ship or boat had passed through there in a long time. All business was conducted outside the gates, these days, in the thriving hum of activity in the middle of the lake, leaving this part of Riften forgotten and lifeless, prone to fall into oblivion. After some weeks, I knew, one got used to it, just as people eventually got used to most extraordinary exposures after enough time. It was human nature (and apparently elven too), I guess, for I wasn’t even consciously bothered by the sluggishly brown waters any more. Instead, I piqued my ears and felt more than actually heard the soft reverberations of a merry jig and slurring sing-song emerging from between the square boards making up the tavern. I felt, considering all other options, we couldn’t possibly go very wrong with a lively tavern. I was halfway across the bridge when Ralof caught up to me.

“No, let´s not go in there right now,” he said and quickly took hold of my arm, stopping me. 

“Why not? Since when do you eschew any tavern?”

“Nothing,” said Ra, staring at the tips of his toes. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” Ra repeated, not in the least convincing. After all, I was an elf and I was his partner of three years, I knew when there was a worthwhile story lying in wait for me.

“Nothing? Doesn’t sound like nothing to me. What´s up with the tavern?”

“Just… I don’t think it´s a good idea if I go in there again… yet.” If it wasn’t nearly dark at this moment, I am sure I would have seen his cheeks flood red with shame. 

“Why not?”

“It may be better to allow things to… sort of… cool down a bit.” 

“Cool down? Why did they get heated up in the first place?”, I asked, smirking for good now. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ra defended himself, though he was doing a rather poor job for himself. Never a good liar even in more comfortable and less embarrassing situations, he was positively stuttering right now.

 

“It´s just… we… Zulu thought that… it… it was a misunderstanding.”

Now I could barely hold back an eruptive bout of laughter any longer. He was just too adorable when he was making a fool of himself. Quite cute how he struggled whenever he thought he had embarrassed himself. Though, as a matter of fact, knowing Zulu, these feelings were probably quite appropriate in this special case.

“Of course it was,” I nodded. “Zulu´s one big misunderstanding in himself, that´s for sure. Did he abduct the innkeeper´s daughter again?”

Ralof jerked his head. “No. It was… no. It wasn’t like that. Besides, the tavern belongs to Argonians.”

I swept aside his objection quickly. “That’s nothing that would stay Zulu, and we both know that. What then? Did he insult an orc again? Or summon an angry spriggan, like that one time he did in Morthal? Have you two been kicked out?”

“You know, if you say it like that, you really cast a slur at him.”

“Yet that is exactly what happened to him,” I replied, leaning in, hungry for details. I guess not even elves can at all times consider themselves immune to gossip. “I know what I´m talking about. I was there. I´ve been with him often enough to know that at least half of the stories revolving around him are actually true.”

“You´re gloating,” grumbled Ralof darkly. “Stop gloating.”

“I am not,” I declared with as much sincerity as I could muster. “Just showing genuine concern for a dear old drunkard friend. So, have you?”

“Not exactly,” Ra admitted haltingly. If he wasn’t clearly feeling very bad for himself (and for his brawny friend back home) I would actually have enjoyed this conversation a hell of a lot more. Though it already was pretty amusing at it was.

“What does that mean? Come on, man, tell me already, don’t beat about the bush!”

“Well, he…,” Ra sighed, running a big hand through his braided hair. “He just met a few… guys… who were particularly out of sorts with him. Some of them brawled about Ulfric and said…. well, not very nice things. Zulu overheard, and you know his temper. What can I say, we were drunk, things got heated up a bit, one word led to another, and it… it was all a bit awkward, in retrospection.”

“Yeah, I bet. What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Ra, and strangely, I believed him. “The innkeep and two of the staff put all of us out to get some air. Separately, of course. Zu and I took a walk. The owner suggested it would probably do us good if we took our fair time to cool things down before showing up in there again. So, I´d rather… not.”

“Wow, one week into a new town and already your big friend has made a whole bunch of new enemies,” I nodded, whistling through my teeth in appreciation. It certainly seemed an impressive quota. “That must be a new record, even for him.”

“Huh, let´s go down there,” Ralof suggested instead of answering and indicated a brightly coloured though slightly mouldy shop sign right at the water´s edge, one story below us. “It looks… nice.”

“… ish,” I added, scrunching up my nose. 

It looked, at first glance, like barely more than a dumpster, a damp hovel – I could barely imagine myself living there, much less someone luring customers so far from the righteous path. Who knew what would await us so far from light and life? Other than the house we had just left, this one was neither enveloped in any good nor in particularly bad odours, but that really wasn’t saying all that much. In exchange for looking remarkably unremarkable at first glance, it looked flimsy and the entire structure towering above the basement flat ready to collapse any minute from now at second glance. I really didn’t want to venture down there, but Ralof was already halfway down the steps when I remembered to object, and, once again pondering all other options, I decided to comply and follow closely in his footsteps. Ironic as that may be, but this could well be the most reputable house in the entire – admittedly probably not really respectable – neighbourhood. Also, of course I knew he was right in saying that at the end of the day, we kind of did belong together. And as long as we felt safe and at ease with each other, that was exactly where we should be as often as possible. After all, this was all anyone could ever hope for, wasn’t it?

I expected beggars, thieves, vagrants and outlaws to open up to us – or much, much worse folk, considering the vicinity to both brothel and city gates – but when the door swung inward at long last, there was only a frail-looking hump-backed old crone, wrinkled and weary-looking and stooping so low I wondered if she had just lost a tooth and was in fact trying to recover it from between the mossy floor boards, but when she looked up and saw us waiting outside, her face – and the ten-thousand wrinkles lining it – reformed itself into a grimace of happiness and she smiled warmly, beckoning us in. 

“Oh, customers,” she crooned and hoppled aside slowly to let us pass the threshold, inviting us in with an encompassing, welcoming bow. “Do come in, valued officers, if you please. We have potions and ointments of all natures, effects and price range. Truth be told, our last shipment is almost a fortnight late in delivery, so we have been running low on some of the rarer ingredients, but I will sell to you on credit or gladly recommend you to a contractor of ours. Or you could of course pre-order and as soon as the good arrives, I will have a courier deliver it to your convenience. It is not often Stormcloaks come here to replenish their stocks. Please excuse the state this shop is in, but the walls are so damp and the air so wet, there´s not much we can do. Still, I hope you find what you need anyways, my lords. Gladly let me know if you need any council or assistance.”

Both of us had to stoop to fit under the lintel and as soon as I crossed the threshold the smell hit me. It was really all I could do not to grimace as a truly repugnant odour infiltrated my nose and reminded me very uncomfortably of the one time in the sewers of Cyrodiil when I had to kill a family of nesting ogres and both of my companions at that time had betrayed me, making for some waste infested cuts and a very, very narrow escape due to a minute-long dive through other people´s excrements. These smells still haunted me in my blackest dreams at night, and though the stink in here was not as bad (yet), it was far from pleasant either. 

Ralof pushed me forwards to enter first and the mouldy front door revealed a two-parted sort of basement. One half of it was neatly decorated – as nice as the rather dark and dank premises of this hovel allowed anyways – with a brick-built countertop displaying all sorts and variations of flavours, spices and ingredients for complex mixtures, as well as entire shelves full of potions, philtres, all sort of creams and ointments and belatedly – entirely disregarding the shop sign swaying in the cool late summer breeze – I realized to have entered into an apothecary and that this woman – the old crone – seemed to be the corresponding, shop-keeping alchemist. She certainly didn’t look like much, but then the most brilliant alchemists usually entertained a most disproportional reputation of diffidence whenever confronted with the worldlier aspects of life. The other half of the room was barely sufficiently separated from the rest, and contained a sorry version of a big twin size bed, a sooty and by the sheer looks of it more than poorly executed sort of fireplace that coated the entire interior in a haze of thick grey smoke which seemed to tempt and tease my lungs to see how long they could go without choking and erupting in pretty impolite, harsh coughing.

 

The floor as well as the leaky brick-built walls seemed either wet from above or from below (or maybe, probably, both), and in one corner a battered old pail caught about half of the amount of water constantly dripping through a hole in the ceiling that was at least as big as Ralof´s hand. There was a constant plop whenever another drop of water hit the steadily growing body of liquid in the bucket that would drive me crazy before long, if I had to live down here. At least the floor was comparatively dry and pleasant to tread on, for there were at least a dozen seemingly hand-woven carpets and rugs covering every last inch of the half-rotten floorboards that must be directly adjacent to the lapping water of the lake no yard beneath my booted feet. I wondered about how this basement would look like if it was storming on the lake outside, and the water reared up to towering waves. It was a thought far from comforting, that much was for sure and nothing I ever wanted to experience first-hand for myself.

“Thank you very much for your kind words, miss,” said Ralof as he fit his large frame through the door and then helped her shoulder it shut. The hinges creaked and the entire door seemed to budge under their conjoined efforts, but finally they managed to close the latch. The shop had no windows and no daylight permeated through the ceiling, so with the door shut to the light of the waning sun outside, we were reduced to a few fuzzing stumps of malodorous candles and the odd petroleum lamp, all of which kept straining my eyes and added to the discomfort I felt about this hovel of a basement. “And we will surely keep you in mind next time either of us is in need of supplies for our travels, but in this instant, we are not going anywhere for a while and have not come here to shop. Indeed, we have come to you because we have moved here, into the Honeyside just across the canal, up on the Dryside. We arrived only a few days ago and are new to the city. My partner and I wanted to introduce ourselves and hope for a harmonious neighbourhood. Indeed, if there is anything you ever need or that has to be done for you, please never hesitate to ask either of us. We´d be glad to help.” I looked at Ralof as if he had just slowly stabbed me in the back – he knew how much I hated any work artisanal – but he ignored me and merely continued, placing a warm arm loosely around me while extending the other towards our benevolent receptor, kissing the back of her desiccated palm in true Nordic fashion. “We are very honoured to make your acquaintance, Lady…”

“Hafjorg,” said the ancient crone, her attentive eyes jittering to and fro the both of us, seeming not entirely sure yet what to make of us or where to place either Ralof or me. “Though there is no lady in here,” she continued in her rasping kind of voice. “I am just an old herb-gatherer and have never once had the good fortune to set a foot inside somewhere I could have met lords or ladies. Not in over seventy years. So, just Hafjorg will do fine, if you please.” 

She sounded nice, amiable even, but wary and on guard anyways. I guess no saleswoman was ever completely trusting and sooner or later developed a very own sense of insight into human nature. Far from needing either approval or benevolence from total strangers, I still wondered what this woman made of us in this moment. She surely exuded the impression that had seen quite a lot in her days – she looked at least seventy, probably closer to eighty, which was a long time in the life of a human, even when measured by Nordic standards – but nonetheless I felt almost certain she had never met the likes of us before. To give her credit though, she looked much more curious than confused to me. 

“Of course. Hafjorg it is, then,” nodded Ralof and bowed deeply. 

Hafjorg squinted her eyes and seemed to try and take direct measure of us. “So you are the new tenants folk have speculated about? Interesting,” she muttered under her breath. “Most interesting…”

“Indeed we are. I am Ralof, of Riverwood, captain of the Stormcloaks of Skyrim. And this,” he gave me a gentle shove in the small of my back so that I stumbled forward slightly. Hafjorg extended her arm and I had to reach out and copy Ra´s way of introduction. I pressed my lips to the wrinkled flesh of her hand and attempted a smile. Ra´s voice got a little bit darker and more asserted, as if he had to prove himself to this frail old woman of all people. “This is Haithabu, an elvish ally to the Nords´ case from distant Valenwood and at the same time my companion and partner.” 

“At your service.”

“I see.” Hafjorg took a moment to process this new information, alternating her attention between the two of us. Her glance seemed to linger on Ralof´s hand on my shoulder just the fraction of a second longer than on the rest of us and she frowned. I could feel the grip of his fingers tighten. 

“What is being said about us?”, I wanted to know after a few moments of silent measurement.

“What?”

“You said people were talking about us. What do they say?” Not that I minded, I told myself, I just wanted to know.

The crone squinted her eyes, shrugged her shoulders and began her snail-paced retreat back towards the fireplace and the cooking contraption built on top of it. 

“Oh, this and that,” she crooned while she began to sprinkle a dark powder into the almost boiling water, “you know, people talk. Doesn’t mean that what people say is necessarily right, though. I always like to get an idea of the matter for myself, before I participate in any kind of gossip. Life´s easier that way, don’t you agree? Please, have a seat,” she continued and indicated a half rotten table coupled with a few randomly assembled chairs. “I was just about to make some tea, and you two look like you´d enjoy one of my special homemade brew-ups. I would be delighted if you could stay for a while and share it with me.” 

“You are not going to poison us, are you?”, I felt the need to ask and felt Ra´s elbow in the pit of my stomach just an instant later.

“Talos, Tabu!”, he hissed. 

“What?!”, I retorted, hissing for myself now. “One is entitled to ask, am I not? Not everyone likes elves as much as you do.”

I could clearly see that Ralof would very much like to give a very extensive answer to that, though fortunately (for me) Hafjorg was faster. She chuckled as she put the kettle on. 

“Don’t worry, I´m not that kind of an alchemist. Actually, I am not much of an alchemist at all. This shop belongs to my husband more than it does to me, and he´s the professional, I guess. I only hold the line when he is away on… business. It´s cherry blossom tea, collected in the grove just outside the old city walls close to Merryfair Farm. Neither of you´ll have to drink it if you don’t feel like it. I just think that way talking will be much more pleasant. Considering, you boys do want to talk? You do, don’t you? After all, we´ll be neighbours now, we should get to know each other, is what I think.” Ralof nodded eagerly, I sighed. “Then please, do make yourselves comfortable,” Hafjorg repeated when still neither Ra nor I had moved an inch. She winked. “I don’t usually bite.”

I shrugged, choosing the least-unstable looking chair for myself. Ralof established himself on the opposite side with a carefully administered sigh and a glowering frown in my direction.

“No offense,” I said, load enough for Hafjorg´s old ears to pick up. “But you can´t be too careful these days. You wouldn’t be the first witch to try and overpower me. I have been tempted by more remarkable looking women. Again, no offense.”

“None taken,” grinned Hafjorg.

“Forgive my partner, he didn’t mean it,” Ralof was quick to cut me short and shot me another of his dagger glances. I suddenly regretted letting Zulu interrupt us before. Something told me that when we got home later, I wouldn’t get much more than his very, very cold shoulder if I continued along these lines. “He just has a hard time getting along with strangers and still needs to learn many things concerning adequacy. Right, Tabu?”

“Oh, he better meant it,” said Hafjorg, still with that fixed half-smile on her pursed lips. “After all, there are a whole lot of evil trouble mongers out there and half the alchemists I know are immersed in some kind of witchcraft. Or even worse. Not the legal kind of pastime, that I can tell you. Discretion is the better part of valour, my mother always used to say. And I think she was right, at least in that respect.” Hafjorg turned to look at me. “Don’t worry about it, I know what you mean.”

“See,” I told Ralof with a forced grin and took the pot out of Hafjorg´s shaking hands. “She knows what I mean.”

Who would have thought it possible, but against all good sense, I was actually even starting to enjoy myself. Winding Ralof up always made for good times, he was just so unsuspecting and without any guile. 

“Humph,” Ra and sunk into a somewhat glum silence.

“So, then, tell me,” Hafjorg started as soon as all of us were served and each had a brimming mug of steaming tea to clutch. “What could cause two young men such as you to move to this far off, remote island of civilization. We do not usually get many newcomers here. Balimund says it is the corruption and the fact that the entire city is infested by the thieves´ guild. But I don’t know.” She shrugged and studied both of us curiously while the hot steam of her concoction rose around her face like the tendrils of a dragon´s fiery breath. “I could well be persuaded to believe that the city is just too far off, too small, too unimportant and ugly in the grand scheme of things to draw people in, to hold them here. Riften´s close to utterly meaningless and its people far from remarkable. Personally, I wouldn’t settle here either,” she stated, giving a short bark of a laugh. “Not if I could afford to move away.”

“So, why did you?”, I asked.

Hafjorg gave another one of her jerky shrugs. It seemed her favourite kind of expression in direct reference to any sort of question or observation directed at her. “Well, I guess life isn’t always about getting what you want. Sometimes, you just have to take things as they come and adapt to given circumstances, don’t you? So, what attracted two soldiers such as you? You look formidable enough to have settled anywhere, really. I bet any town in Skyrim would be glad to have men like you around. Why Riften?”

Oh, you don’t know the half of it, dear Hafjorg, I thought. We are neither as formidable nor as innocent as you think, though of course I didn’t say this out loud. Despite myself, though, I realized I somehow instinctively liked the old women. She seemed affable enough and I appreciated her quiet sense of curiosity and genuine interest in our story, the way only very little persons ever care about, yet there was neither a sense of judgement nor did she seem rude in prying. 

“Well, honestly, I kind of like the city,” I offered. “It may not be the homeliest or the most welcoming settlement of the realm, you are right there, but I find it has a bewitching charm all its own, doesn’t it Ra?”

“Bewitching indeed,” he grumbled, clearly not entirely over my former slight yet. Considering he had been the one to insist on doing this ridiculous introductory round at all, I found it close to unfairly vexing that I had to do most of the talking by myself now. 

“Hm,” said Hafjorg, though she nodded in contemplation, seriously taking into account my argument, and took a prolonged sip of her home-made tea. She neither turned blue nor began to choke and froth, thrashing on the floor in spasming fits of imminent death, so after assuring she was still healthily enough after a minute or two, I decided it would be safe enough to taste the brew myself.

“Oh, and what I really appreciate is that the inhabitants are nice, forthcoming, yet distant enough to leave well alone when necessary. I like that in a city. There´s nothing worse than nosiness in all the wrong places.” I thought of Whiterun and of Riverwood, places where people knew better about the ins and outs of their neighbours´ business than they did about their own and I shook my head in emphatical disdain. No, I really didn’t like all too inquisitive people. Not a bit.

“It´s probably because folks already have enough on their own plates here to care much for what others do. Indeed, life on the fringes is ofttimes hard and full of deprivation. I mean, the Rift is not called one of the most dangerous areas in Skyrim for naught, I guess. We have so many vampires, witches, spriggans and other foul vermin haunting these woods for miles around, we could well do with a few capable exterminators once in a while.” Hafjorg dropped her voice to a whisper. “And then, there´s the thieves´ guild.” 

“What do you mean?”, I said, as innocently as possible. Across from me I saw Ra tense as he lifted this flower-imprinted cup of tea to his full yet slightly chipped lips and he quickly shot me a warning glance.   
“The thieves,” said Hafjorg, though all of a sudden, she seemed furtive and uncomfortable. Her eyes were kind of searching the room, which was ridiculous, really, cause of course there couldn’t have been anyone hiding anywhere. Though her wariness was not utterly unsubstantiated as I knew, as the thieves´ guild was aware of absolutely everything that transpired in their city, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem at the time. They had their eyes and ears everywhere. After all, I was one of them. “They are everywhere. They have a tight hold on the city. Jarl Law-Giver has tried countless times to rid the city of their influence once and for all, but they are too cunning, too resilient to be exterminated like that.”

“Seems like it,” I said, taking another sip. The fluid spread through my body like incandescent lava. “Does that bother you?”

Hafjorg´s answer came promptly and honestly, though she was as clearly still wary and not sure yet if she could trust the both of us. I couldn’t blame her for wondering about that. “Most of the times they don’t bother with the affairs of simple people and merchants the likes of us. As long as we keep quiet and don’t actively act up against them, they are not interested in the simple folk. Eilgrim and I don’t have one single valuable item in our possession they could possibly desire. So I guess we will be all right.” 

I looked around the room quickly and involuntarily agreed with her. Used to the task, my mind needed all but a handful of seconds to evaluate all the spartan furnishings and spare items of decoration. There was nothing of any worth or value under this roof, nothing even that outside of it would be able to dispense any money at all (except maybe some of the pricier potions on the shelf behind the counter, but you couldn’t very well steal one of them, could you, if you didn’t want to sell them at an obscure druid´s gathering out in the woods at night). Which was okay with me, I guess. As I mentioned before, she seemed all right to me, and I always resented stealing from friends or allies. After all, there is a sort of code of honour even in the thieving business, though admittedly most people prefer not to acknowledge that. In many ways our code of honour even surpassed most others, but that was something I didn’t even dare arguing about with Ralof. Not many people shared my opinion about stealing and though my most of the times loving partner tolerated this branch of profession, we had a silent agreement not to talk about it if indeed it could somehow be avoided. True to the motto don’t ask don’t tell we had decided it was better for Ra as a Stormcloak officer to know as little about this source of income and my entanglement with it as possible. Ra shifted in his stool uncomfortably, though Hafjorg, in a true flow of speech, didn’t seem to notice.

“They aim at higher goals, I think. Back before the raid, a few months ago, they tried to replace old Anuriel with one of their own, to gain influence in the palace. Last year they were actively railing against the Jarl and her government. From what I heard they haven’t been particularly successful lately, though. Fortunately.” 

Yes, I remembered that. Though both occasions had been a little bit more complicated and complex than she made them sound. There had been many accusations from and against almost all of us and even more hot-headed arguments between us after the betrayal of Mercer Frey that had nearly cost all of us both our lives and the important respect towards each other that was so paramount in this special line of trade. It had almost crushed the thieves´ guild altogether. Crushed our sense of trust in each other. Cause, believe it or not, working with thieves and forming a sort of commercial association together with people who earn money by stealing, heisting, and lying and whose only loyalty is to their loot, required a considerably bigger amount of trust in your comrades than if you´re hired to muck out a dirty chicken cage. After all, this fragile trust is often all you have, if push comes to shove and you find yourself seized by official authority. More often than not, your associates are the only ones who can and will bust you out, who still give a shit about if you live or die. For most others in this realm, you are just scum, once associated with the guild. I still shuddered sometimes when I reminisced about how Mercer had attempted to kill me and most others in the guild and ruin the rest of it with one big swipe of his arm. He had almost been successful, too. It sure as hell had been a very eventful year for the thieves of Riften and certainly not their proudest. Recovery as well as recuperation since then had been slow. There just weren’t all that many people left to trust and all of us had unanimously agreed to better be safe than sorry and take things slow before we started any bold projects again. So we had lain low and I had done nothing particularly noteworthy for them during the last few months except a few minor burglaries and the odd pick-pocket job. Just to keep my hands in. As if reading my very thoughts, Hafjorg continued. 

“It has been quiet, lately. Haven´t heard of any break-ins or clashes with the city guard in a while. And nobody has even seen a thief in even longer. I hope it stays that way,” she concluded with a knowing nod and decisively emptied her cup of tea. “Don’t think these Stormcloaks up in their fancy keep would be up for the challenge.”

I gave a little cough into my tea quietly and indeed, it took Hafjorg only a second to realize who exactly was sitting across from her. Ra kept a straight face and didn’t seem particularly offended when Hafjorg facepalmed in a gesture of sudden alarm. 

“Oh, dear me! I am sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, should I? I really didn’t mean any disrespect. I mean, you are a Stormcloak. You are a captain. I… I shouldn’t have said that. Apologies.” 

There was barely a breath between her hastily uttered words and she looked at Ralof with eyes wide open, worry deeply entrenched in them. 

“Don’t worry yourself,” he answered quickly however, his trusting expression accompanied by one of his seldom and therefore all the more winning smiles. “It´s okay. There´s no need to walk on eggshells around me. You can have your opinion and I have mine. We don’t have to agree on every level. I can take it, believe me. Tabu and I disagree frequently, but we both know to express our opinion nonetheless.” He regarded me with the most adorable half-smile of the day and suddenly all resentment or defiance I may have felt towards him evaporated like a magically conjured illusion at a bolt of one of my arrows and my heart melted as ice did when thrown on a hot flame. “But you´re not wrong entirely,” Ra continued speaking to Hafjorg. “Ulfric´s arm is not as long as he would sometimes like, I guess. Especially if it´s as far-off and out of focus as Riften often is.” He quickly looked to me again. “For that I apologize. I am sure there is something we can do about that. I will think of you and of Riften next time I visit Windhelm and speak to Ulfric about it.”

Hafjorg jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire. “Really? You could do that? Would you?”

Ralof gave a respectful bow, though it looked rather comical sitting down. “Of course I would. It would be an honour for me.”

I rolled my eyes again – once more only internally, of course – being the only one realizing Hafjorg and Ralof did not discuss the same thing any more, had indeed stopped doing so several sentences ago. After all, Ralof could very hardly rat out his boyfriend and the guild said man was associated with, could he? And especially not to the king himself. At least I know for a fact that said boyfriend would not be terribly amused about that at all. 

“Well, I guess Ulfric´s not the only one of us wishing for a longer arm – or a third one of it, that is,” I joked, partly to take the sting out of the conversation and partly to change the subject. “The things I could do with an additional hand.” I gave a wink at both of them though where Ra only shook his head slightly as if in embarrassment, Hafjorg on the other hand looked positively nonplussed. 

But I had succeeded, and after that, the three of us shared a few more nervous laughs, knowing smiles and the conversation soon turned to more comfortable subjects. After all, if we had to talk to people at all, it better be about something that didn’t threaten both life and profession of at least one of us (and in this case by guilt through association even both of us). The tea was unexpectedly pleasant to taste and the old woman very forthcoming and chatty indeed. Even Ralof seemed to discard his initial sulking after both Hafjorg and I discovered we shared a great many character traits as well as personal experiences. For the most part indulgent in old memories, she told us how she and her husband had wanted to open a shop in Cyrodiil, the far-off Capital Imperials nowadays seemed so proud of, but were sent here instead, on a mission to investigate and eventually procure some rare flora and fungi growing in these gently sloping, more often than not spider-infested, vampire-haunted and spriggan-controlled woods and establish an outpost of Imperial discipline in an increasingly chaotic nordic struggle for freedom and justice. Both of them Nords by birth and more precisely from Eastmarch in origin, they had jumped at the occasion to finally return to their – more often than not – economically unpromising homeland and strive for success under the close-guarded yet economically rather liberal patronage of the waxing Empire. As so many before, though, their investors had finally lost both interest as well as funding after only a couple of years, leaving Hafjorg and Eilgrim beggars in the prime of their lives, deprived of anything their own.

It had been a long way back towards what could be called a normal life, though even their current situation would not generally qualify for more than an accommodation aiming at mere survival, nothing particularly comfortable nor luxurious. Seeing where she and her husband came from, though, Hafjorg seemed genuinely happy with it. Sharing in in what united most elderly people – or at least, elderly humans, I guess – she seemed primarily happy to have found some willing listeners before which she could spread the story of her life and with whom she could pretend all of these things she told us about were still well within her reach and not events of the distant past. First and foremost, she just seemed glad to be able to speak to someone, to just talk about everything and anything. It seemed she didn’t get around to that kind of thing with her rather taciturn husband much anymore. But both Ralof and I were glad to listen, I guess, for I at least would much rather hear about her life and the various troubles she had encountered in her years of walking this earth than be asked to tell about mine. Till Ra had come along none of it had been particularly nice or story-telling-material and I didn’t want to bare myself and my entire history to this woman – no matter how sympathetic she seemed to me on first impression – when I have not even told Ra about all of it yet, and maybe never would. Ralof, though, seemed very engaged in the entire affair and listened curiously. She told us about the troubles she and Eilgrim had had to face since establishing shop in Riften and their ongoing daily struggle to survive. 

Then, much to my relief as I hated all too serious conversations even with my friends and confidants, much less with total strangers I had met just about an hour ago, we moved on to more exciting topics after that. She inquired after our profession, why we had wanted to acquire that house specifically. Why we wanted to settle down in the first place. She asked how we had met. Despite her age and the abundant prejudice in nordic cultures towards arrangements such as Ra´s and my relationship, both mystically and traditionally, it seemed a subject inherently intriguing to her and she pelted us with questions, one after the other. How had we fallen for each other? Why had we fallen for each other? Where did we come from? What about our families? How had we known about us, about each other? Had we ever met other people like us? She didn’t know anyone like us, though she´d always wondered, she said. I shifted in my chair, leaving the majority of the talking to Ra as he was much better in things like these than I could ever hope to be. Her interest seemed close to infinite and the questions went on, incessantly. Yet, it was neither an uncomfortable kind of interrogation nor was she in any way trespassing in nature. She just seemed to display a natural curiosity and both Ra and I – for once – were eager to answer her every inquiry, to clear up misunderstandings that may or may not have biased her, without knowing anything about the subject. It was something that happened much too seldom anyways and I for one was glad to share this side of me with someone who just this once did not look down his nose at me or whose face scrunched up in a mask of disgust once he learned of my sympathies, of my – as my father once called it – vile desires. It was refreshing and a pleasant surprise in short, especially since I had come here expecting something else entirely. I had the strong feeling I´d come to like the old woman quite well, given time, and we could become the closest of friends. 

“So, you truly love each other?”, she asked finally. 

“We do,” nodded Ralof who had taken my hand in his a couple of minutes ago and was now distractedly playing with my fingers. 

The old woman sighed. It sounded wistful. “Ah, I just wish I had something like that as well,” she said and where she had regarded us touching with a wary sort of guardedness at the beginning, she seemed positively comfortable with it now. It was the shortest any person had even needed to accommodate with the two of us and I respected her a lot for that.

“How so?”, I inquired. 

Hafjorg shrugged her emaciated shoulders. “Well, you know how it is,” she sighed wearily. “Or maybe not, considering you are still so young, so innocent.” She looked wistful for a second, though I was pretty sure she didn’t know how very not innocent I was. Nor how old, as I didn’t yet look my age. “But passion dies fast when you have to scrape the floor for scraps to eat. Eilgrim is not the man he was, once. And I am probably not the same woman he married either, the maid who fell in love with the mysterious alchemist. These days, there is not much mystery left, between the two of us. Many things change, given time.” 

Ralof looked at me sadly when she said that, and I felt pretty certain I knew what he was thinking. I patted his knee briefly, trying to reassure him. Hafjorg looked at my hand curiously until I snatched it away, busied it again with my empty tea-cup just to have something to hold on to. The tea had run out quite some time ago, and though Hafjorg had immediately offered to make more, both Ra and I had declined.

“I´m sorry,” said Hafjorg now. “These things are of no interest to you. Just an old woman´s laments. I guess you don’t want to be bothered by my silly whining.”

“Quite the contrary, indeed,” I said with a hopefully alleviating smile. “I like to talk about people´s relationships. It´s a topic I never seem to get enough of. Especially if it involves men, if you know what I mean?”  
It took Hafjorg a moment to process these news, then she smiled as well. “I´ll make sure to remember that, then. Though usually, there is not much of any interest going on here. As I said, Riften´s not the most spectacular place of all.”

“There´s always stuff going on,” I asserted confidently. After all, I knew people and their habits. “Believe me. You only have to look hard enough and you´ll find more you could ever hope for.”

While Ra still seemed occupied with himself and his thoughts, Hafjorg laughed her cackling laugh again and from there, the conversation trickled on for a while.

“I like the two of you,” Hafjorg said after I had finally reminded Ralof of Zulu and the task we had left him with – as with a very small and very naughty child, the towering Nord should under no circumstances be left alone by his immature self for longer than utmost necessity dictated and behind my eyes I could already see our kitchen going up in flames – and we quickly rounded up our conversation, and prepared to leave. 

“Make sure to stop by, once in a while,” Hafjorg said and to my surprise hugged both of us briefly, shyly, yet affectionately enough to make me wonder, when she opened the door for us. “And check in on a poor old woman such as me. Eilgrim´s busy most of the days anyways. You make for good company, both of you.”

Ralof, the more companionable of the both of us by nature hugged her back happily and smiled the smile that reached the depth of his eyes. I, on the other hand, socially awkward and all, just stood there, a little perplexed and taken by surprise by her quick trustfulness, and didn’t know what exactly Hafjorg expected from me as she embraced me for a few seconds longer than I felt utterly comfortable with. I patted her back awkwardly and was for the most part glad once it was over. Despite her nordic origin she was so stooped and hunched her head came only up to my chest and I was half a head smaller again than Ralof. 

“Thank you, Hafjorg. It was very nice to meet you. We will certainly be no strangers, I promise.” Ra smiled and winked. “And certainly not after discovering you´re passionate for tea. Truth be told, I love tea as well, but this one´s not too handy with things like that.” He gave me a playful shove and a leer and I could see how comfortable he was getting, how quick he´d been to open up to and trust Hafjorg. If nothing else was, this was as certain an indicator for her moral candour as any other references I could have found, as well as her trustworthiness, because I knew for a fact that Ra never gave his trust thoughtlessly. After all, he was an excellent judge of human character and he erred only very very seldom. 

“Well, as long as I´m handy with the right sort of things,” I replied, and both Hafjorg and Ralof smiled. “Though of course you´re welcome to stop by at our place any time too. Maybe you´ll even bring your husband too, next time. I am quite curious now about who could be the companion of a remarkable woman such as you are.” I wondered for a second if that was maybe laying things on a bit thick, but Hafjorg´s dull eyes beamed happily.

“Oh Haithabu,” she cackled, “such a charmer. Too bad the two of you are lost to all these fetching young women of this world. You would have made for such perfect lady-killers!”

“Well, I´ll have you know I am still pretty good at killing women, just as I am at killing men. After all it´s sort of my job. But I guess that´s not what you meant. Though coming from someone like you, I´ll gladly take that as a compliment. Thank you for the tea and the lovely conversation,” I said and waved alongside Ralof as we stepped out into the fresh air. “So long, Hafjorg.”

 

∞∞∞

 

“See, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”, Ra said to me once we were back on our way home, by now trundling through misty dusk that was colouring the tips of his sandy hair an unnatural shade of pre-dark pink. Sunrises and sunsets in this northern hemisphere could take hours where they were mostly over in a couple of minutes back in tropical Valenwood where I was coming from. “I´ll make a philanthropist out of you yet.”

“Ah… well,” I said, basically knowing he was right, of course, but not wanting to give him the satisfaction of actually admitting it. “We shall see about that.”

Ra being Ra, though, I didn’t have to. He just bumped me with his shoulder and said “Doesn’t really matter though. I´ll like you anyways, no matter what.”

“Thank you. You know what,” I proposed, mulling over some idea in my head.

“What?”, asked Ra, who seemed somehow deep in thoughts himself.

“We should have a dinner party tomorrow. A get-together for the inauguration of our house, of the first safe house in my life, really, of our new home.”

“You serious? Who are you, and what have you done with my reclusive boyfriend?”, Ra exclaimed good-naturedly.

 

“Let´s just say you´ve started to rub off on me,” I said with a lascivious grin. “And not only in the strictly pleasurable, but in the social way too. Seeing as it was mine to begin with, I think this would be a great idea. Let´s invite Hafjorg and Eilgrim and the nice couple from the stables. They seemed friendly enough.” Ra looked at me quizzically. “You know, the two who took care of our horses. The big one and the black guy. Remember? You’ve not had a stroke, have you? It´s only been a week, after all.”

“Yeah I remember. But they weren´t a couple,” said Ra. “They work together. There´s a difference.”

I shrugged. “Whatever. We work together, at times, and yet, we´re still a couple.”

“Yeah, but we´re also not what folk would consider ordinary, are we?”

“Probably not. Anyways, back to the subject, please,” I interrupted quickly. “An inauguration. Zulu can bring the friends he made last night at the tavern – if they´re not still drunk and wanna kill each other. And we could invite the Stormcloaks you know from the garrison. It could very well get to be a merry occasion. By the way, this is me trying to socially function. What do you think?”

“It´s fine with me. I love it when you´re trying to socially function. As long as you don’t insist on having hookers?”

“Why on earth would I insist on inviting any hookers?”, I asked, taken aback. “I mean, have I ever?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Ralof though judging from his tone of voice I was very certain he did know pretty damn well. And he was not amused. Gone was the joyful banter of a minute ago, replaced with a stern sort of reprimand. Though unlike most of the times, I felt his discontent crash over me completely undeserved. What on earth could possibly have brought this on right now? “Maybe what I always thought I knew about you is not in fact as true as I wanted it to be? Maybe I don’t know at all who is sharing my house, who is sleeping in my bed every night, whom I´ve lost my heart to?”

Now it was on me to goggle at him. “First off, it´s our bed. And second… what?!” I had stopped in surprise, but Ralof trudged on relentlessly, causing me to lag behind a few steps, anxiously trying to figure out what the hell he meant by this sudden change of attitude. Couldn’t we ever just enjoy ourselves without inexorably turning any argument into a discussion of morals and honour? 

“I´m just saying… After the way you acted before, talking to that… that woman at the brothel, who could still know who you really are? What you really want? One moment you´re telling me I am the man of your dreams, the next you´d want to run off with an under-age boy from a place like this.” He nodded towards the towering structure constantly overshadowing the small square in front of our door. There were already a few fairly drunk individuals loitering about and I felt myself grow increasingly suspicious of their shady purposes. 

“There we go. I knew this discussion wasn’t over yet,” I sighed, then continued louder. “Why on earth would I want to run away with a hooker?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. You seemed fairly inclined towards their trade before.”

“Excuse me?”

There was a tug at Ralof´s jaw and his mouth hardened into a straight line. “You know what I mean,” he said, truculently. “You were defending them. Feeling for them.”

“What exactly are you trying to say here?”

“I… I don’t really know either?” He refused to meet my eyes. “But why do you sympathize with them? Why do you talk about it as if it were completely normal to go to such a place? Why do you try to make such a big deal out of it when it´s not? When it shouldn’t.”

I stopped dead in my tracks once again as he said that, this time reaching out in time and spinning him around to face me before he could elude me. “What, seriously?”, I exclaimed, maybe a little bit louder than originally intended. “I am making a big deal out of it? Me? You´re the one who apparently can´t stop thinking about them. What´s your problem?”

Suddenly, his usually so moderate and conscientious temper flared. “I have a right to know about you too, Tabu,” he yelled. “I tell you everything, always. You know my entire history. And I always thought I´d know the most important stuff about you as well, but now… I don’t know. Do I?”

“What?!”, I said, out of any other resourceful options. “What´s gotten into you?”

“It´s just… You´ve sounded fairly comfortable with hookers,” he said and stuck out his jaw in the defiant way he had. He assumed this particular pose every time he was angry with me, though it did not happen often enough so that I could say I was or would ever get used to it. I probably never would, no matter how often we argued, cause every time we disagreed I felt a wrenching sensation in my gut telling me to make up with him, make amends to him, to kiss him until the last scrape of dissent was eradicated cause really, at the end of the day, nothing else counted than having each other. He was honestly the best part of my life. Ralof though, once having started, seemed only too eager to engage. “Is there anything I should know? Anything you have until now failed to relate to me?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe any secret dreams or wishes? Maybe I´m not good enough for you. Maybe you need more. Someone better, someone else. To keep you occupied? Satisfied? Happy?” The look he gave me as he said this nearly shattered my heart into a million tiny, broken pieces.

“Are you serious? Ra, you cannot seriously be serious, are you?” I was not sure if he would interpret my genuinely horrified tone the right way, but momentarily I didn’t know how to stop it either, I was so shocked by this unexpected outburst.

“What if I am?”

“But… I… why?” How could he possibly have developed thoughts like these, how had he come to fear I didn’t love him enough? Was it something I had done? Was it something I had not? How could he ever think I´d get tired with him, that I´d want someone else than him? What could I do to make him see that there would be no other for me, not in a long, long time, maybe never?

“Because… I don’t know what to think any more,” he bit back with a whiny sort of snarl. 

“Maybe you would if you´d tell me what the actual problem is? Cause I sure as hell have no clue what you´re talking about!”

He seemed to brace himself, then took a deep, deep breath. “Do you like hookers? Have you… been with some?”

Out of everything else I could have done, should have done, I laughed. Loud and cutting. Not because this entire situation was particularly funny or amusing, but because it was utterly ridiculous, this whole conversation absurd. A few languid heads turned our way lazily, but luckily none of the people in the square seemed too obsessed with or even remotely interested in us and our argument. “So that´s what you´re worried about?”

Ra motioned for me to be quiet and looked around furtively. “You know what I mean.”

“No, no I don’t. Why do you want to know?”

“Because I want to know if you´d like one. Once in a while.”

“No! Ralof, this is insane. We are in a relationship, for god´s sake. I love you. Stop this madness!”

“Do you really?”, he challenged, rebelliously. “Love me, that is?”

Suddenly understanding where all of this came from, what has caused this, some of the fight drained out of me. “Of course I do. I do tell you often enough, don’t I? Time has never blunted my feelings before, and it certainly won´t with you. I am much too smitten with you for that ever to happen. I can assure you of that.”

“You do say so,” he admitted eventually, defeated. “But after what you said before, I don’t know if I can rely on that at all. I mean, you sounded so defiant, so convinced. You made it seem so ordinary, normal even, to desire… them. I began to wonder, naturally.”

I heaved a heavy sigh. “You really want to know it? All of it? The truth?”

“I don’t know. Do I?”

I tsked. “Once,” I argued, despite myself both louder and more emphatically than he deserved. I ignored the suitors who turned their lolling heads and trained their dull eyes on us as we passed them, frantically whispering, and ignored the bottles of liquid they swung in widely arching gestures of dismay. What a neighbourhood indeed! Ralof had started walking away again and was still almost an entire yard in front of me, so I grabbed his arm once more to force him to look at me. “Once in my entire life. And it was only because I felt lonely! I thought it would help fill the emptiness within me. I genuinely thought it would help to make me feel better, less lonely. But it didn’t.”

“Humph.” Sometimes, he was just too stubborn to reason with. He had the somewhat unalluring habit of closing off and receding ever further into himself whenever he was miffed, of ignoring and discounting all protest and attempts of reason, distancing himself from whomever tried to argue with him instead of letting out his anger, blowing off some steam. It was driving me mad, sometimes, and even more so knowing that I could never get him to just express himself, to just yell at me the way I sometimes wanted to yell at him whenever something came up we really shouldn’t ignore. Relationships truly called for hard work, every day, and sometimes they were just infuriating as hell. But then again, they give you so much more than you ever hoped for at the same time, which made arguing once in a little while almost negligent in significance. Being with the person you love made all its struggles and all its difficulties almost worth your while.

“Don’t be like that,” I snapped, suddenly getting cross again. “It was years before you were even born. I don’t have to justify myself for the life I had before you. For any of it. I tried it, once, in Cyrodiil. I rented a boy but I quickly decided it wasn’t for me and I didn’t do it again. Not once. I´m not proud of it. So, go ahead and judge me.”

Ralof´s voice – despite his stony expression – was soft when he spoke again. “I don’t judge you.” He looked at me and I could see the depths of his soul – open and bare to the touch – in the magnificent blue of his eyes. “I just want to understand you.”

“Then understand this! You are the man of my dreams,” I emphasised. “Neither of us is perfect or unflawed, but nobody expects us to be. I know we try to make it work anyways, at least we try to be our best selves for each other. And I love you for it. Every day. So cut this out and stop doubting me.”

Ra cast down his eyes. “I… I know. I am sorry. I… I guess I am just scared, uncertain. Anxious even, maybe. Sometimes I am afraid you may leave.”

My voice changed when his attitude did. “You mean, leave you? As in going away and walking out on you.” 

“Yes,” Ralof whispered, his answer barely more than a breath. He still refused to meet my eyes. “I´m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Why would you think something like that?”, I asked as gently as I could though if I was completely honest I felt quite shaken as well. We had reached the easel of our house and in the darkness of early evening we were by now hidden from most obscure glances though all that mattered to me was only Ralof anyways.

“I…,” Ra didn’t seem to know where to start or what to say at all, for that matter. Still, I didn’t say anything for a long time either, didn’t do anything, just waited till he was ready to come out and tell me about it and finally he was and did. “I just… sometimes it… all of it just feels too good to be true. Too damn surreal to believe I am able to… to have all I ever wanted, to have… you and, I don’t know, I just start to freak out about it. I am just a man, after all, average and common. Nobody ever made me feel the way you did. Still do, that is. Nobody ever really wanted me. And… Talos, this is hard. I don’t want to freak you out.”

“You won´t. You don’t.”

“Well, there isn’t much else to it. I am afraid I´ll let you down, some time, I´m afraid I´m not enough for you. I´m afraid you´ll be… bored with me, eventually. Leave. I want to be as special for you as you are for me.”

“Ra, you are special to me,” I said as slowly and deliberately as I could. “You always have been and you always will be.” I cupped his cheek in my hand and my insides relaxed as he closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, just as always, his tension slowly abating, his jaw unclenching. “We may not always see eye to eye on everything, but that doesn’t matter. We do on every important level and that´s what counts. Next time, please tell me if you have any doubts. I want to talk with you about stuff like that. Okay?”

“Okay.” Ra quickly swiped a hand over his eyes, through his hair, and managed to look even more adorable in his red-cheeked embarrassment than he did before. “Great,” he coughed sheepishly, “I guess I succeeded, now, in ruining the mood for good.”

Quickly pressing a fleeting kiss to his lips, I took hold of his face between both of my palms. 

“No you didn’t. Not at all. You couldn’t. Not with something like that. If anything, this just makes me love you more.”

“So, you aren’t mad?”

“Mad? Are you crazy?” I laughed, this time honest and genuine and relieved beyond comprehension. “How could I be mad with a statement like that? I love you, Ra, and I am glad you love me too. It´s the best any boyfriend can ever hope for. You are the best boyfriend I could ever hope for.”

“You are too.”

“Great,” I said, then, taking hold of his hand I made for the door. “After establishing this once and for all, now… how about sex? We certainly deserve it, don’t we?”

“Sure,” he nodded. “You won´t have to ask twice about that,” but then he stopped just before I could turn the knob of the door. “But… wait!” I turned and looked at him with my eyebrows raised. 

“What? Not the best of boyfriends after all?”

“No. No, no, that´s not it at all. But… Zulu!”

“Oh…,” I made, remembering. “Ri-ight. Zulu.”

“So, I guess all we have left is planning a party.”

“Ri-ight,” I nodded again. “Hardly better than the other thing. But then, one should be glad about what he has. I guess we should set Zulu up with someone soon, though. Or hide a corpse out in the woods that we can send him to go fetch. Maybe that will get him off our backs for long enough.”

“Probably.” Ralof grinned. “But I guess that’s a thing we should worry about later. For now, I can smell supper.”

“I can smell something burning,” I countered.

“Which would be our supper,” Ra confirmed, nodding knowingly. I guess I realized belatedly why Zulu had always helped secure the perimeter and was in fact never ever made to cook on any of the raids I had joined the Stormcloaks in and what that meant for the both of us now.

“Oh dear Lord,” I sighed as Ralof opened the door and I could see gradually what had happened to our kitchen and the degree of destruction Ra´s friend had left therein. “This better be hell of a meal, or I am finally gonna have to kill him after all!”

 

∞∞∞

 

We were standing in our kitchen and discussing the specifities of our house-warming celebration when a new thought occurred to me. After discovering just what havoc Zulu´d been wreaking in his attempt to fill all of our stomachs with food, I had quickly jumped in to save the burning food and Ra and Zulu had tried to clean. Now, supper was done and the majority of the chaos removed. “Hey, why don’t we invite Serana to the party tomorrow and a few guys of the Dawnguard as well? After all, they are close enough and during the last year I spent almost as much time with them as I did with you. Let´s send a runner over there and invite them. They could be here tomorrow, in time for dinner. I haven’t seen Serana in months!”

“You… what?”, Ra goggled at me. He was unpacking the last of the tightly wrapped cutlery and tableware and stacking them in the tall shelves Zulu had assembled in the kitchen the previous afternoon. I was doing the (still limited amount of) dishes we´d had for dinner in a big pot by the oven and Zulu was out, probably getting drunk again. For now I was glad to be rid of him, cause he really was harder to take care of than the most obnoxious little child. Though he´d probably run out of suitable places he could be his true and destructive self in faster than I could shoot my quiver full of arrows – and I was an exceptionally fast shot indeed. I considered convincing Ralof of staying home and having a quiet evening with me, preparing for tomorrow´s festivities, as one of the greater achievements of my life.

I shrugged. “I said, why don’t we invite Serana to the party? I´d like having her over.” 

“Really?” He looked as put off by that as if I had suggested inviting a mushroom. Or a demon. I was suddenly afraid he was considering throwing the heavy vase he was just rearranging at me for not asking his permission before. “Are you serious? You wanna invite Serana?”

“As I just said, yeah,” I replied, slowly dodging out of range, behind the fireplace. “Are you still drunk?”

Ra didn’t react to my comment. “But she… she´s giving me the creeps.”

“Yes, but she´s also my best friend,” I said in return. “Zulu´s your best friend and he has been wreaking havoc in town and snoring in our guest room for almost an entire week now. Now it´s too much to ask for your okay about inviting my best friend for one single evening? The way I know her, she won´t even accept an offer to stay here for the night. She´s just not like that. She´ll be gone again before the sun rises. She won´t even defile any daughters or try at ruining our reputation in a town that is as of yet mercifully unbiased towards our kind of lifestyle. She´s quiet and humble. She won´t be in the way.”

“But… Tabu,” protested Ra feebly. “She´s a vampire!” 

“And?”

“And you know I don’t like their kind.”

“And Zulu´s a drunk. You know I don’t like his kind.”

“But… he… At least, he´s human!”

“Wow, just… wow. And that from the man who´s been consorting with elves for the past few years. Seriously?” I looked at him with raised eyebrows and a mock expression of bewilderment. “Surely you must have noticed at some point in our nearly three-year relationship that I´m not entirely human either, haven’t you?”

Always taking my sarcasm much more serious than it was meant to be, he nodded and looked at me with puppy dog eyes. “Of course I have. Every day. But that´s not what I meant. You… you´re different. You´re not a vampire. You´re an elf. You don’t wanna suck me dry.”

I closed my eyes for a short time and took a deep breath, for once not raising to the bait and jumping at this occasion for an ambiguous, bawdy joke. Apparently, he was just much too wasted still to be made fun of, I could see that. “What´s wrong with non-humans?”, I asked instead. 

“Nothing. As long as they´re not vampires and you have to be on guard at all times so that they don’t drink the rest of your guests! Best way to get on the bad side of this entire town. And here I thought we actually wanted to leave a good impression?”

“Serana is three thousand years old. I´ve fought with her more times than I did with you. We´ve literally been wading in rivers of blood together. Trust me, she´s got this. She´s not going to lose control on a single evening like that. It may surprise you, but you are not actually that alluring to everyone.”

“Hey. That hurt my feelings!”

I buried both hands in the dishwater and decided it may probably be a better idea trying to appease than to affront him, if indeed I wanted his consent in this. And that I did, as it was not going to be any fun without. After all, this house – this entire existence we were so carefully carving out for the two of us here – was as much Ralof´s as it was mine. And we both knew it hung in the balance as of yet, as was our success and the happiness we would one day – hopefully very soon – derive from it. Our arrangement would work only as long as both of us were eye to eye on most aspects of daily life as much as on any superordinate concerns presenting themselves before us. Indeed, settled life entailed a sheer incessant amount of commitments, obligations and, inherently, liabilities I would never have dreamed of before, ones that were mostly tiresome and wearying. I had just never fathomed how hard compromising would be back when I still roamed the wild, alone and without any obligations to anyone. That, of course, had changed with Ralof, and for the most part I was glad it had. I was glad he had. Because he had changed me more than anything else ever had in the very close to three hundred years since I was born. We usually were in accord, that´s true, but that didn’t mean there would never be disagreements and arguments over the little stuff in life. After all, relationships were always as much about compromising as they were about reciprocal devotion. Or about love. And with Ralof, breaking it down to the most basic wants and needs, urges and desires, it has always and will always be about love. What is it, then, that causes us to fall in love at all? I wondered not for the first time, looking at him, appreciating him, adoring him. We are met with those first, initial glimpses – a kind of curiosity, a longing for that which is both familiar and unknown in the other. And then comes the surprise of discovery; we share certain aspirations, certain appreciations, and that which is different excites us. Before each other, we are moved to bravery and we come to reveal more and more of ourselves, and when we do, those very traits that caused us some embarrassment or shame, become beautiful in ways we did not understand before, and the entire world becomes more beautiful for it. There are, too, those intimate and nearly primitive stirrings, the scent at the neck, the delicious tremble of skin and breath. Yet for all their pleasures, they are as tenuous as light and air, as fickle as birds in flight, as fleeting and evanescent as the apparition of a ghost at the gates of Sovngarde, forever awatch, yet never truly able to sway the fate of anyone passing beneath their wary gazes. What really counted, at least that was my belief back then and has been for as long as I could think, for as long as I had loved, was the like-mindedness of spirit and mind, the wordless (or sometimes near-wordless) kind of understanding that tethers two minds together, the naturalness of having and being able to rely on each other, no matter what, that keeps lovers sane. For me, that was the most beautiful thing in the world. 

“Well, you are to me,” I said and looked up at him with a half-smile, wistful but honest, “but there again I guess you should be happy I am – as you so fittingly described – indeed only just an elf and not a vampire as well.”

Ra had stored the vase – hideous and with ghastly images of fornication, apparently a gift from his sister, but I was prepared to put up with it if only Ralof liked it – and regarded me with his arms crossed, a mellow yet serious expression in his face. 

“I am happy you are the way you are,” he said solemnly, in the way so typical for him, yet instantly making him mature years beyond his actual age, years even beyond Galmar and Ulfric, who could both pose as his fathers.

“But… you question my choice of friendship?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Well…”

I rolled my eyes exaggeratedly. “Come now, Serana´s nice. She´s not gonna bite you. At least, not in front of me, so just stay close by my side, darling, and all will be fine.”

Ra sighed. “I really hate it when you´re doing this, you know that?”

I grinned, sensing his agreement even without an actual verbal consent and loving our relationship and the way we could make disagreements like this work. Even though I knew I probably would have to compromise on the atrocious curtains Ralof loved so much in return for this. But seeing Serana again – even if just for a single evening – was totally worth it. At least, that´s how I tried to convince myself to spend the rest of my days looking out of my windows through silly lace curtains. I would have to remember that feeling.

“It´s my elven magic. Nobody is immune to that. Nobody can withstand my charm.” 

“So, how about we move the bewitching part of the evening to an even higher level?”, he said in a deeper voice than usual and took a step towards me. “You know Zu´s out and probably won´t return for a while. We have the house to ourselves. Why don’t you show me exactly how charming you can be if you truly want to?”

“Uh, I like where this is going,” I said and quickly stood, wiping my hands on a discarded towel. The dishes could wait, the washing-up could wait, the world could wait. Nothing was as enticing or intoxicating as Ralof was for me and I fell into his arms with a contented sigh, forgetting all worldly sorrows and concerns for just as long as he needed to make me whole again.


End file.
